Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (7 page)

Edmund’s death was mourned by Welsh poets, who described him as ‘brother of King Henry, nephew of the Dauphin and son of Owen’, comparing Wales without Edmund to a land without a ruler, a church without a priest, a beach without water. What the poet failed to mention was that Edmund was about to bequeath what was to become his greatest legacy; for in death he had left his young wife Margaret seven months pregnant with his child.

At twenty-six, Edmund Tudor was over twice his wife’s age, who at twelve was two years younger than the accepted age of fourteen at which a marriage could be consummated. To attempt to conceive a child any earlier brought with it significant risk to both mother and child. But Edmund had ulterior motives for making Margaret pregnant at such a young age. With a landed inheritance that included estates in the south-west and the Midlands, together with other properties in Yorkshire and in Wales, Margaret’s landed value was worth over £800 a year. Edmund knew that in law, if a living child were born to the couple, no matter how long it lived, as father he would become the official tenant of Margaret’s lands, able to legally receive the income from her estates. It was a ruthless strategy, and given Margaret’s small physical size – as her chaplain John Fisher admitted later, she was ‘not a woman of great stature … she was so much smaller at that stage’ – a significant gamble to take. But Edmund seemed to care little for his wife’s physical welfare. His overriding concern lay more in the material welfare of his landed estates and wealth. The irony of Edmund’s sudden death was that it would be Margaret, inheriting portions of Edmund’s estate, who benefited most from the marriage agreement.

A difficult pregnancy was made worse by fears that the plague which had killed Edmund might have spread across the region. John Fisher recalled the danger surrounding Henry’s birth, coming so soon after his father’s death: ‘while your mother carried you in the womb’, he later told Henry in an oration, ‘you narrowly avoided the plague of which your illustrious father died, which could so easily have killed an unborn child’. Behind the towering thirteenth-century walls of Pembroke Castle, Margaret took to her bed in a small room on the first floor of
the great gatehouse to prepare for childbirth, a terrified thirteen-year-old uncertain not only whether she would survive the birth, but also what her future as a widow with a baby might be.

On St Anne’s Day, 28 January 1457, Henry Tudor was born at Pembroke Castle. It was not an easy birth. For a time it seemed that in labour both Margaret and Henry were at risk of losing their lives, and the trauma of the birth left Margaret so physically damaged, if not mentally scarred, that she would never have children again. Henry would be her only child, strengthening what was to become a remarkable bond between mother and son. Years later, Margaret remembered in a letter how ‘this day of Saint Annes, that I did bring into this world my good and gracious Prince … and only beloved son’. Even as she recovered from childbirth, Margaret swiftly took control of her son’s destiny. One tradition recorded by the sixteenth-century Welsh chronicler Elis Gruffyd, related to him by some old men alive at the time, was that the baby had been baptised Ywain, Welsh for Owen, but upon hearing this, Margaret had insisted that the child’s name be changed to Henry, perhaps to reflect the importance of his English identity over his Welsh origins and closeness to the Lancastrian dynasty. If true, it was one of the wisest decisions Margaret Beaufort was ever to make.

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TO CONQUER OR DIE

I
n March 1457, two months after giving birth, Margaret Beaufort departed from Pembroke Castle, travelling across harsh wintry tracks as she journeyed a hundred miles eastwards. She was accompanied by Jasper Tudor, who had returned to Wales upon news of his brother’s death to ensure the safety of his sister-in-law and his newborn nephew Henry. It would mark the beginning of a lifelong bond between Henry Tudor and Jasper, who became over time a kind of surrogate father. Jasper himself was unmarried and without an heir; he knew that it would be on Henry’s shoulders that the fortunes of his family would rest. As one Welsh poet wrote in an elegy composed shortly after Edmund’s death, Jasper would do everything to protect his brother’s baby son, whom the poet compared to a young deer who would one day grow into a proud stag.

For the moment, Jasper decided that Margaret must take a new husband as soon as she possibly could. The young girl had only been widowed for five months, and was still recovering from giving birth, but they both understood that given the political turmoil, it would be better for Margaret to choose a husband now rather than later have another forced upon her by the king, or whoever controlled him. For this purpose the destination of their journey was Greenfield, near Newport, the Duke of Buckingham’s residence. Buckingham was one of the wealthiest peers of the realm, and the only English nobleman whose power might match the Duke of York. The duke was keen to marry his second son, Henry Stafford, to Margaret, mindful of her substantial landed estates which would enrich the family greatly. Since Henry Stafford and Margaret were second cousins, the couple needed a dispensation to marry. This was granted by the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield on 6 April, with
the official ceremony being celebrated the following January.

Jasper Tudor now turned to the task of finishing his brother’s mission to bring peace and stability to South Wales. Sir William Herbert had remained at liberty, free to continue his lawless campaigns that included mustering armed men in Abergavenny, Usk and Glamorgan. At the end of March 1457, charges were brought against Herbert, Sir Walter Devereux and the Vaughan family. Henry, Margaret of Anjou, together with the Duke of Buckingham and Jasper Tudor arrived at Hereford to oversee their trial. It was difficult not to suspect foul play, though at the trial, no blame was laid upon Herbert, Devereux or the Vaughans, who merely claimed that they had acted with parliamentary authority. At the same time, the court party realised that simple vengeance for Edmund’s death would prove counter-productive, with the potential for heavy sentences to be seen as an attack on York. Instead, Herbert was to be pardoned along with the Vaughans, though Devereux was gaoled until February 1458.

Whatever retribution Jasper had hoped to achieve for his brother’s death, Herbert’s release and amnesty must have been galling. He knew that Edmund’s death, whether from the plague or violence, had been hastened by his arrest by the Duke of York’s men. It was to mark a watershed moment for Jasper, who now broke off contact with York. His earlier dalliance with compromise and moderation had ended, as Jasper placed himself firmly in the king’s camp, committed to the Lancastrian cause. He spent time at court in personal attendance upon Henry at Sheen, with ‘no more Lords’, though he preferred to leave the capital whenever possible, hiding himself from the realities of impending conflict by returning to his Welsh estates. Yet further rewards drew Jasper ever closer to the court party: following the death of the king of Aragon, Jasper was elected to take his place as a knight of the garter. He was even granted his own tower near to Queen Margaret’s accommodation in the palace of Westminster where he could hold council meetings and keep his papers.

It was in Wales where Jasper, as Earl of Pembroke, was given greatest influence. In order to shore up the Lancastrian position in West Wales, in April 1457 Jasper was granted the constableships of Aberystwyth, Carmarthen and Carreg Cennen castles. Jasper himself began a programme of strengthening key towns and castles in south
Wales, including Tenby, whose walls were thickened to six feet at every point, while the town moat was widened to thirty feet. Jasper was also given a more prominent role in enforcing law and order in the region: in March 1459, together with his father Owen Tudor, he was given a commission to arrest several Welshmen. It seems that unlike Edmund, Jasper was successful in reconciling Gruffyd ap Nicholas and his sons with the Lancastrian cause, their previous hostilities put aside as both factions united to prevent further interference from York’s men in Welsh affairs.

Margaret of Anjou continued to strengthen her position at court. She ruled as a monarch in almost name, with the king’s letters being signed by her personally, expressing ‘our great marvel and displeasure’ if her commands were not followed. ‘Almost all the affairs of the realm were conducted according to the Queen’s will,’ one chronicler wrote, adding tersely, ‘by fair means or foul.’ Yet Margaret needed the military strengths of York and the Earl of Warwick to prevent attempted invasions from the Scots in the north and, more worryingly, the French upon Calais. Reconciliation was attempted by both sides, when on 25 March 1458 the rival parties took part in a ‘Love-day’, marching arm in arm to a service at St Paul’s Cathedral. What the country needed was not love-days, but an energetic and strong monarch who would be able to provide effective leadership. Everyone knew Henry VI was utterly incapable of this. Each party understood that the tensions were too great not to spill over into further civil war. ‘I dread fearfully,’ one observer wrote, that ‘more mischief [shall] arise, and from the sores unhealed a scab will form, so large that nothing may restrain its growth.’

The festering tensions beneath the surface finally spilled over at Blore Heath, near Market Drayton in Staffordshire, when on 23 September 1459 the queen’s forces clashed with a small force led by the Earl of Salisbury. The queen’s side were driven away, and Lord Audley, the chamberlain of South Wales, was killed. Salisbury moved swiftly south, where he met York, the Earl of Warwick and other Yorkist noblemen at Ludlow. Their forces were far smaller than the king’s army that was moving towards them. York and his allies issued a manifesto professing their loyalty; in response, Henry issued a pardon to all who would join his standard within six days. It was an effective tactic, for when on
12 October the two sides found themselves facing each other at Ludlow Bridge, despite York’s forces being carefully entrenched, his troops melted away, refusing to fight against their anointed king, preferring pardon to death in battle. York, together with his son Edmund, was forced to flee into Wales.

York had been crushed and humiliated. Margaret was now determined to complete the victory. Parliament was summoned to meet at Coventry on 20 November. Vengeance was to be its sole aim: nicknamed the ‘Parliament of Devils’, the main bill of the session was a wide-ranging act of attainder that was to strip York, his sons the Earls of March and Rutland together with the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick – in total twenty-seven members of the nobility – of their titles and lands. Their estates were to be portioned out among Henry’s loyal supporters. Once more the Tudors were to become the beneficiaries of others’ misfortune. Owen Tudor was granted an annuity of £100 from manors forfeited by John, Lord Clinton, while in addition to being granted the rents from York’s forfeited lordship of Newbury for seven years, Jasper was appointed as life constable, steward and master forester to York’s lordship of Denbigh in North Wales. For Jasper, whose income had risen to £1,500 a year following Edmund’s death and his inheriting of a number of properties jointly owned, the additional offices merely confirmed his status as the country’s premier nobleman, especially since the disgrace of York, Warwick and Salisbury. With each grant, however, came resentment and increasing unpopularity from York’s own men, who refused to give up their positions without a fight. Jasper was forced to lay siege to Denbigh Castle for several months, at a cost of £650. In order to defeat Yorkist resistance, Jasper was granted remarkable powers by the king to judge and execute rebels at his discretion, confiscating their goods and weapons, in addition to raising a force against any of York’s men. It was testament to the strategic importance of Denbigh, which had been York’s main channel of communication between Ireland and England. In granting his half-brother almost vice-regal powers, the king intended that Jasper would be entrusted with making Wales impregnable from further Yorkist invasion.

The Yorkist cause had been scattered – York had eventually found sanctuary in Ireland with his son Edmund, while his eldest son Edward
of March had ridden south through the night, sailing with the earls of Warwick and Salisbury to Calais. Everything seemed to be in ruins, their followers captured or killed, their wealth and inheritance destroyed. But York refused to give in. He established himself as ruler of Ireland, claiming to be the King’s Lieutenant. The duke recognised that in spite of his defeat, disillusion still prevailed in England. Nothing had changed since 1450; the king, incapable of rule, remained in the grip of a clique of advisers. The Parliament had moreover terrified the property-owning classes since, with its unprecedented attainders, stripping some of the greatest landowners of their property, it threatened to undermine the sanctity of inheritance. These fears the Yorkists were able to harness in streams of letters and broadsheets sent from Calais, denouncing the king’s evil and grasping councillors, ‘our mortal and extreme enemies’ who had, they claimed, planned the attainders for their own enrichment. Where would their greed end? Presenting themselves as champions of good government, the Yorkists began to build up support for their cause in south-east England, where memories of the Lancastrian reprisals in the aftermath of Cade’s rebellion remained fresh in the mind. Londoners had also become disenchanted with the Lancastrian regime, which seemed to have deserted the capital altogether for the Midlands, and whose commercial policies were badly affecting trade. By the summer of 1460, having made sufficient military preparations and reinforced by the Calais garrison, they were ready to descend upon England.