Rebellion (20 page)

The carriage rattled on like her
thoughts.

It came to her that the Beauforts did not do
well from war. Her father, her cousins; the late Duke of Beaufort. They had gained
nothing from the unending wars. Her second husband, Edmund, had gained nothing
either.

It could be argued that they did not do well
from marriage either. Her mother's second husband had committed suicide, her third had
been attainted; Margaret's own husband Edmund had died in prison.

And her third husband, Henry – had he done
well?

She could give him no children, which he did
not seem to mind. He did not have to know that she was the daughter of a disgraced war
commander and suicide, that her titles and possessions were based on a deception. She
would say nothing.

She was, perhaps, more like her mother than
her father, after all.

She could see the gates of her own home now,
and there was her husband, coming out to greet her.

This was not in itself unusual, since he
worried about her when she was away. But he was holding in his hand a letter that had
the royal seal.

‘What?' she said as he came forward to help
her from the carriage. ‘What is it?'

Her voice was sharp with alarm, but all he
said was, ‘You'd better come in.'

Her heart quickened almost to the point of
pain. She did not think she could take any more bad news that day.
Attainder
,
she thought desperately. But what for? And surely there would be officers?

‘You had better sit down,' he said as they
entered his study.

‘For God's sake,' she
said.

‘No, no,' he said, seeing her expression.
‘It is his majesty's intention to bestow on us a gift.'

She sat down.

Henry was fiddling with his spectacles, then
with the seal. She waited in a state of numbed impatience. ‘It is the gift of a manor
house,' he said.

‘No,' she said. She snatched the letter from
him and began to read it herself.

His most excellent majesty, King Edward IV, grants and awards to his beloved
liegeman Henry, Lord Stafford, and his wife, the Countess of Richmond, and to
their heirs male in perpetuity, the rights, lordship, parks and lands of Woking
Old Hall, of the manor of Woking …

She looked at her husband in
disbelief.

Woking Old Hall.

It had been her grandmother's property.
Inherited by Henry Beaufort – the late Duke of Somerset. After his execution it had
reverted to the king.

She remembered visiting it as a child.

It was a substantial property on the River
Wey; moated, with orchards and a deer park. Why was he giving it to her? She had assumed
she was in disgrace, along with the rest of the Beauforts.

‘It would appear that the king is in need of
supporters,' her husband said, looking at her over his spectacles.

Was that true? Certainly he was less popular
than he had been. People were saying that he had not brought peace, only taxes. His
popularity had not recovered since he'd changed the coinage a little over a year ago.
Everyone said that the new coinage had been created at the expense of the common
people.

But there had been a burst of generosity
since the birth of his
daughter. The magnificent celebrations and
christening that proved he was not disappointed had been followed by a distribution of
gifts.

And her husband's nephew, the Duke of
Buckingham, was now married to the queen's sister.

Even so, this was the first mark of the
king's favour to them since Towton. They could thank God that she had prevented her
husband from fighting against the king at Hexham. He had been ill at the time, she
remembered that now; it had been a fortunate illness.

Already her mind was working out the
practicalities. It was closer to court, but further away from her mother, which was no
bad thing. But they could not move immediately, there would be repairs – the manor house
had stood empty for some time. But there were big gardens, and many outbuildings. She
could have a hospital there, like Alice Chaucer. And, more importantly, guests from
court.

They could hire carts from the nearby abbey
for the removal.

Her husband was still looking at her,
waiting for her approval, her smile. But her mind was now working on a different track.
If the king was so anxious to court their friendship, then surely now might be the right
time to approach him about her son? She could get his permission to visit him at
least.

‘I must write to the king,' her husband was
saying, ‘to thank him for this unlooked-for gift.'

She smiled at him, finally. ‘I will write,'
she said.

When King Henry was asked during his
imprisonment in the Tower why he had unjustly claimed and possessed the crown of
England for so many years, he would answer thus, ‘My father was king of England and
peaceably possessed the crown of England for the whole time of his reign. And his
grandfather and my grandfather was king of the same realm. And I, a child in the
cradle, was peaceably and without any protest crowned and approved as king by the
whole realm, and wore the crown of England some forty years, and each and all of my
lords did me royal homage and plighted me their faith …

John Blacman

Obviously King Edward had to win over as many
supporters of the former king as possible, especially while that king was caged like one
of the poorer specimens in the Tower menagerie. A wasted lion, perhaps, toothless and
clawless, riddled with mange. But still with the power to provoke the people's
sympathy.

He had allowed, even encouraged, visitors,
so that they could see the former king in his reduced and pitiful state, since, next to
execution, public humiliation was the most effective way to destroy a king. Several of
them did come to mock him, of course, and of course he forgave them, as was his wont. He
responded with dignity to those who threatened or tormented him and they
went away subdued. But there were others who came to tell him of
their griefs and suffering; to have the boils on their necks removed and their scabrous
heads blessed.

Once it was reported that he had seen a
woman attempting to drown her baby in the water surrounding the Tower. He had called out
to her and rebuked her, and she had brought the baby to him, weeping, to be cured of its
deformity.

King Edward could not stop the flow of
visitors without giving rise to rumour and speculation; turning the tide of the people's
sympathies. Still, throughout the country, Henry was the focus of riots and rebellions.
More and more of his supporters were making their way across the sea to Margaret of
Anjou's tiny court.

The second King Henry had invaded this
country at the age of fourteen after his mother had been exiled. The young prince,
Edward of Lancaster, would soon be fourteen. But King Edward did not think that King
Louis would grant the old queen enough money for an invasion. Not while Warwick was so
assiduously courting him.

And not while the old king was still alive,
for his son could not be king until he died. If King Edward had King Henry killed, there
would be waves of support throughout Europe for the young prince. And if he died of
natural causes his body would have to be on display for as long as it took to dispel
rumours of suicide or foul play.

Rumours of that kind could never completely
be dispelled.

For this reason he ensured that the old king
was treated moderately well, and he courted his friends and supporters with generous
gifts of money and land, while still giving liberally to his own supporters. He was
constantly in need of money.

He had inherited a nation wracked by debt,
bled dry by war, ruled by a king so poor he could not afford meat for his own table. All
the problems of the first part of his reign could be attributed to money or the lack of
it; that special poverty of
kingship that makes the king dependent on
other men. He'd had to tax the people very heavily at first, which had caused so much
protest that he'd had to look for other ways of filling the royal coffers. So he had
reclaimed crown lands which had been lost under Henry VI, exacted payments in return for
handing out offices or promotions and had persuaded parliament to grant him the revenues
from customs duties at English ports. And he'd changed the coinage.

People were suspicious of the new coins, of
course, but they had generated great revenues both at home and abroad. At the same time
he had concentrated on boosting the wool trade; English cloth was now in great demand
abroad. The merchants, who were a rising class, loved him.

With the money he collected he strove to pay
off the debts that were a legacy of the wars. The old king had never paid his debts, and
so could never gain further credit. But he, Edward, could claim credit, from the
merchants who loved him, or from foreign banks. And the wars were over now, the main
rebellions suppressed. He would in that year, 1467, promise parliament that he would
live off his own
without levying any more taxes. Which, if he managed it,
might well be considered the greatest achievement of his reign.

Still the people complained about the
magnates, his ‘overmighty subjects'; accusing them of violence and extortion, of
appointing corrupt officials who exacted more from them than was their due, and who, for
a bribe, could prevent any case coming to court. This was difficult for the king because
those same lords had helped to bring him to power, and he relied on their support. John
de la Pole had married his sister; William Herbert's son was married to his wife's
sister.

Such magnates thought, perhaps, that their
proximity to the king placed them above the law. They were not above the law, and he had
attempted to prove this. He had tried to prohibit the keeping of private armies, but it
was not easy to pass this through
a parliament that consisted of lords
who kept these armies. He had attempted to replace corrupt officials and prevent
intimidation, presiding over many courts himself. As far as possible, when his subjects
made an appeal directly to him, they were rewarded by his presence.

They were frequently overawed by him, of
course; sometimes they could not even speak. And then he raised them easily from their
knees, touching without recoil the malformed and malodorous, those covered in weeping
sores.

Some claimed they walked better afterwards,
or were actually cured of some lasting ailment. They had felt a kind of heat, they said,
passing from his flesh to theirs; a kind of prickling on the surface of their skin. He
rewarded them handsomely with gifts of money. They would never again question the divine
nature of kingship, or doubt that this particular king ruled by the will of God.

Also he'd had work done on several royal
palaces: Greenwich, Westminster, Windsor and Eltham. But he chose as his primary abode
the Tower of London, where the former king was also lodged.

No other monument exercised such power over
the imagination of the people. No other fortress stood as symbol of the realm. And no
other king had chosen to make it his base and the foundation of his rule.

It had been built by the Conqueror, of
course, who had come over from Normandy and created a new England. Just as he, Edward,
had conquered England and was now building a new nation. At the same time it was a
reminder to all foreign nations and would-be invaders that England had not been
conquered by foreign forces for four hundred years.

It was close to London Bridge, which was
itself one of the wonders of the world. Foreign visitors could not fail to be impressed
by this citadel within a fortress within a wall as they approached London along the
Thames. It was the size of a small
town, containing the treasury and
armouries, streets and chapels, gardens and a menagerie. The former king was lodged in
one of the prisons of the outer court, near Traitor's Gate, but in the inner court was
the White Tower. King Edward had his House of Magnificence here, his ‘chambers of
pleasaunce' where he entertained foreign visitors. Scholars and ambassadors and princes
from all over Europe were royally welcomed and dined so that word would spread about the
opulence of his court and table, where the king of England was served by four hundred
courtiers and two thousand people ate every day at his expense. Such riches, such
extravagance and excess, had not been seen in England since the time of Richard II.
Banquets of fifty courses and more were served every night. Broiling and sweating, their
abdomens close to bursting, the ambassadors marvelled at the king who finished one plate
after another with a negligent air.

These foreign lords could only imagine that
his massive frame contained extra yards of gut. It was fortunate indeed, they said
(among themselves), that the English king was unlikely ever to be hung, drawn and
quartered, for the executioner would never finish pulling out the long ropes of his
intestines, all swollen with food.