The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (17 page)

There are widely divergent views of Elizabeth, but they seem to be determined by how the chronicler viewed the events of 1483. The Queen certainly had her admirers as well as her detractors. Edward Hall writing in the 1540s describes her as, ‘a woman more of formal countenance than of excellent beauty, but yet of such beauty and favour that with her sober demeanour, lovely looking and feminine, smiling (neither wanton nor to humble) besides her tongue so eloquent and her wit so pregnant’.

She was certainly beautiful, probably manipulative and certainly enjoyed playing politics, with her son Thomas, known as ‘Lord Marquis’, as her lieutenant. After Clarence’s execution ‘Lord Marquis’ became the King’s chief representative in the south-west and an influential member of his Council, although he seems not to have been popular. As Mancini noted, he was a ‘newly made man advanced beyond those who excelled in wit and wisdom’. Thomas More tells us he quarrelled regularly with Hastings ‘over the mistresses whom they abducted, or attempted to entice from one another’. He was a drinking companion of the King and – by all accounts – an arrogant and shallow man, but was probably entertaining company. King Edward himself was not an ideal example. Mancini reported:

He was licentious in the extreme; moreover it was said that he had been most insolent to numerous women after he had seduced them, for, as soon as he grew weary of the dalliances, he gave up the ladies much against their will to other courtiers. He pursued with no discrimination the married and unmarried, the noble and lowly: however, he took none by force. He overcame all by money and promises, and having conquered them, he dismissed them. Although he had many promoters and companions of his vices the more important and especial were...relatives of the queen, her two sons and one of her brothers.

Edward was the brother involved and they must have had good fun. However, it is surprising that the King, in his late 30s, chose Edward, in his early 20s, as one of his boon companions. The King obviously knew Edward well but their companionship rather supports the theory that Edward had been with him – as Anthony’s page and squire – through thick and thin. There was probably a lot of visiting the stews and bath-houses, where loose women and parties abounded.

Twenty years later Thomas More was writing that the Queen hated Lord Hastings because she thought him ‘secretly familiar with the King in wanton company’. That means she had heard – like Mancini – that he was ‘the accomplice and partner of [the King’s] privy pleasure’. It was obviously difficult having a younger husband, and while she may not have known about her brother and her sons, she knew that her king was a serial philanderer. He loved the excitement of the chase through to the conquest but he usually abandoned his mistresses once he had enjoyed them, although he did have his favourites.22

There are well-known portraits of King Edward and Elizabeth. The only certain picture of Anthony is the one in the Lambeth library and there are no known portraits of young Edward Woodville. Perhaps the woodcut that Chaucer published in
The Canterbury Tales
of his elegant knight (see plate 1) is based on a Woodville, for he knew them well. Five years later the Spanish chroniclers described Edward as witty, good looking and a stylish horseman with a taste for fine clothes. One also reported that he ‘found great favour with the fair dames about the court’. His family were noted for being tall with good looks and golden hair.

Property and position determined marriage and if Edward had been driven by ambition then the Queen, his sister, would have found him an heiress. There was no pressure on penniless younger brothers. For instance, his near contemporary young John Paston pursued women endlessly until he was 30, when he decided the time had come to settle down. He tried Katherine Dudley. His elder brother made his case to her but had to report, ‘and she is nothing displeased with it. She does not mind how many gentlemen love her; she is full of love...[but] will have no one these two years.’ Young John wrote, ‘I pray get us a wife somewhere’ and then fell in love with Margery Brews two years later. Five hundred years on, it is still moving to read their letters where the love is so strong.

One young nobleman fell in love with ‘the Nut-Brown Maid’ across the social divide. He pretended to be penniless and, even worse, on his way to exile.

She: be so unkind to leave behind

your love the Nut-brown Maid.

Trust me truly that I shall die

Soon after ye be gone

For, in my mind, of all mankind

I love but you alone.

Eventually he comes clean:

I will you take and lady make

As shortly as I can.

Thus have you won an Earles son

And not a banished man.23

Edward meanwhile was sowing his wild oats with King Edward, Thomas Dorset and his friends. In the England of that time they were drinking sweet wines, brandy and beer, while the women, ‘though beautiful, were astoundingly impudent’. That is according to one Silesian nobleman who was visiting.24 He also decided that the English ‘surpassed the Poles in ostentation and pilfering, the Hungarians in brutality and the Lombards in deceit, while their virtues consisted of their wealth and hospitality, although their cooking was poor’.

But the English knew how to enjoy themselves. Elizabeth of York’s privy purse accounts of 20 years later show her paying for players, dancers and other performers, as well as for minstrels and musicians. She kept greyhounds, bought arrows for hunting and played dice and cards.25 But at least their souls must have benefited from the certainty of their faith, which was joined to a sensible directness. A prayer of the time says:

Help us this day, O God, to serve Thee devoutly, and the world busily.

May we do our work wisely, give succour secretly, go to meat appetitely, sit there discreetly, arise temperately, please our friend duly, go to bed merrily, and sleep surely; for the joy of our Lord, Jesus Christ, Amen.26

In those halcyon days of the late 1470s and early 1480s England was at her best. It was when young Edward thought, talked, danced, loved, bathed, exercised and went hunting. There was music and laughter; it was when the sun of York shone on a peaceful and well-run country; when Shakespeare has Duke Richard tell us:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour’d upon our House

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,

Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visag’d war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front:

And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds,

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber,

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.27

But the clouds were gathering and peace would be shattered. Edward was ready to take a leading role.

In early 1483 England was preparing for war with France, and Edward, the new knight banneret, would be eager for action. This was not a war of King Edward’s choosing and had more or less been forced on him. Since the middle of 1482 his foreign policy had been in difficulties, the Scottish campaign had been expensive and little money was left for other ventures.

So when Maximilian of Austria, the Regent of Burgundy, appealed for help against France Edward prevaricated. Maximilian was in a weak position; his strength had come from Burgundy through his wife, the young Duchess, but she had recently been killed by a fall from her horse and the duchy was in chaos. Maximilian became regent but then fell out with the Members of Flanders who appealed for French help. King Edward understood the problems but calculated that King Louis, incapacitated after two strokes, would do nothing.

However, the French king, wily as ever, signed a treaty with the Members of Flanders at Arras on 23 December 1482. King Edward was enjoying Christmas in his palace at Eltham with its newly completed great hall where 2,000 people feasted under the magnificent oak hammerbeam roof.2 He entertained and set new fashions, ‘dressed in a variety of the costliest clothes very different in style from what used to be seen’.

The Treaty of Arras caught him by surprise and what he particularly disliked was the inclusion of an agreement for the heiress of Burgundy, Maximilian’s small daughter, to marry the Dauphin, the French heir apparent. But the Dauphin was already engaged to the Princess Elizabeth, King Edward’s daughter, so it was a blatant insult and, adding injury to insult, King Louis decided this was the time to stop paying the pension he had agreed at Picquigny.

An infuriated King Edward considered it rank betrayal by the Burgundians and a direct challenge by the French.3 He may well have become fat and idle in the last seven years but he was not going to allow this.
The Crowland Chronicle
reports: ‘The bold King was determined to give anything for revenge. Parliament was again summoned and he disclosed the whole series of great frauds and won over everyone to assist him to take vengeance.’

The misericord in the sovereign’s stall in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, depicts the Treaty of Picquigny. It is beautifully carved and shows the kings of England and France together in friendship. But King Louis has lost his head. Was the decapitation by Edward in his fury? Nobody knows but it seems probable.

By Easter the scene was set for a punitive expedition. Ever the tactician, King Edward covered his back by talking to Margaret Beaufort who was presently married to Lord Stanley. Henry Tudor, her son from her first marriage, was the last Lancastrian pretender; perhaps he might be brought back from exile and married to Princess Elizabeth? It was certainly a possibility that was discussed.

Military organization went ahead: the King instructed Sir Edward Woodville, the Captain of Porchester, to commission an expeditionary force of 2,000 men with a budget of £3,269-14s-3d. Sir Edward bought two new ships for £856-13s-4d, 2,000 new uniform jackets, extra ordinance – guns, powder, shot, arrows – ‘most needed [to] be bought over the King’s own stuff delivered out of the Tower’. He also arranged pilots for his fleet.

In the West Country where the Marquis of Dorset was the King’s principal lieutenant, there was a Treasury allocation of £800 to pay for 1,000 men to be on standby against invasion for six months. Calais seems to have been a cause for concern, for an additional 500 men were dispatched there.4 But at this crucial time King Edward fell ill. It was obviously serious, for there were premature reports of his death and a mass was sung for his soul at York while he was still alive.

The dying King tried to put his affairs in order; ‘first, like a good Christian man, he reconciled himself to God...then he made his will, appointing his sons as his heirs’. It is also believed that he added a codicil to his will appointing his brother Richard of Gloucester as Protector. But there is no hard evidence of this. It also appears he was worried about the rivalry between his in-laws and his friend Hastings, whom he begged to stop his quarrelling: ‘Dorset, embrace him – Hastings, love Lord marquess.’ 5

King Edward IV was just over 40 when he died on 9 April, probably from a stroke. He has had mixed reviews as a monarch but it is worth remembering that during his reign some of the greatest Perpendicular churches were built. He was the first King of England to die solvent for more than 200 years. When he achieved the crown he assumed debts of around £370,000 and had annual royal revenues of just £24,000. During his reign he increased those revenues to £70,000.6

The shrewd Philippe de Commines summed King Edward up: ‘not a schemer, nor a man of foresight, but of invincible courage, and withal the most handsome prince that ever my eyes did behold. Most fortunate was he in his battles, for he fought nine all on foot, and was always the conqueror.’ 7

His death was unexpected and it meant the King’s Council was now in charge. Their main worry was how the French would react to news of King Edward’s death. The Council ordered the embarkation of more soldiers to reinforce the Calais garrison. They did not question the decision to nominate Duke Richard as Protector and acclaimed the young Prince of Wales as king on the day his father died.8 They were probably relieved that there was a clear-cut arrangement and they could pass executive responsibility on, particularly as it looked as if the kingdom now needed a war leader.

If the King had any deathbed fears about his brother’s integrity then they would have been dispelled by his confidence in the well-balanced establishment he had built.9 Duke Richard was the obvious choice to maintain political stability, as he was the only surviving brother and had demonstrated both his loyalty and his abilities. So while the country grieved for the dead King, at least they could be confident in a fine young heir with a supportive family.

The prince’s youngest uncle, Sir Edward Woodville, was one of the escort to the coffin when the King was buried on 17 April, a public position in a very elaborate ceremony.10 But behind the scenes of pomp and pageantry the Council still worried about France. Strengthened by the new neutrality of Burgundy, the French were becoming ‘overbold’; in particular Philippe de Crèvecoeur, the Baron d’Esquerdes, a.k.a. Lord Cordes, was chasing and capturing English ships. Edward would have discussed the problems, the threats and the possible courses of action.