The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (8 page)

So it is hardly surprising that four months after the battle both the Woodvilles, Lord Rivers and Anthony, were released from the Tower and pardoned. A little later the ambassador of the Duke of Milan was reporting: ‘Lords adherent to King Henry are all quitting him,...one of the chief of them...Lord de Rivers with one of his sons, men of great valour, come to tender obedience [to King Edward]. I held several conversations with this Lord Rivers about King Henry’s cause and he assured me that it was lost irredeemably.’ 22

In December King Edward confirmed the continuation of Jacquetta’s dowry, the restoration of Rivers’s land in Calais and his position as ‘chief rider’ 23 of a forest in Northamptonshire. Just one year after Towton Edward appointed Lord Rivers to his Council and confirmed Anthony in his wife’s title as Lord Scales, with silver scallops on a red (gules) background as a part of his coat of arms and his badge. The Woodvilles were now Yorkist. As Talleyrand remarked, ‘treason is a matter of date’.

Re-established in the ruling hierarchy, Lord Rivers and the beautiful Jacquetta were based at the family home at Grafton. Their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, had been one of the ladies of the bedchamber to the Lancastrian Queen Margaret and married to a Sir John Grey. But the unfortunate girl was widowed when Sir John was killed at St Albans in 1461 and now had motherin-law problems. The mother-in-law had recently remarried and was determined to hold onto all the Grey property,24 so Elizabeth was left penniless and obliged to return home to Grafton with her two small children.

The other Woodville siblings were Anthony (Lord Scales), Jacquetta (the younger), who was already married to Lord Strange of Knockin, and four younger brothers, John, Lionel, Richard and Edward. There were at least five more unmarried sisters: Margaret, Anne, Mary, Catherine and Eleanor. This was the family the King might possibly have found on his visit to Grafton and the first time Edward, then perhaps six years old, would have met him.

King Edward had married Elizabeth on 1 May 1464. The ceremony had been conducted in secret but five months later all England knew and talked of little else. Apparently everyone but the Woodvilles and their relations regarded the marriage as highly irresponsible, particularly the Earl of Warwick, who had spent much of the last few months negotiating an engagement for the King to a niece of the French King. The King of Castile (Henry IV, ‘the Impotent’) had also just offered Isabella, his half-sister and heir, as a bride, but the real cause of Warwick’s anger was Edward’s total disregard of his advice. Warwick had believed he was the power behind – and not that far behind – the throne.

A wit told King Louis XI of France that there were ‘Two kings of England, M. de Warwick and another whose name escapes me’.25 This other king, Edward, unconcerned by Warwick’s displeasure, arranged a magnificent coronation for his new queen at Westminster Abbey on 26 May 1465. There was a strong Burgundian delegation led by one of Elizabeth’s uncles, Jacques de Luxembourg and, for added ceremony, 40 Knights of the Bath were created to escort the new Queen to the Abbey. Included were Elizabeth’s next two brothers, Richard and John; amongst the others were Duke Harry of Buckingham and his younger brother who was then eight or nine years old.

An enormous municipal effort had been made in the City where, amongst other things, 45 loads of sand were shovelled on to London Bridge at a cost of four pence per load. There was spectacular pageantry and sumptuous feasting in Westminster Hall, followed by a grand tournament the next day where Lord Stanley won the prize, a ruby set in a ring.26

The date of Edward Woodville’s birth is unknown. He was obviously too young to be knighted at his sister’s coronation, and another sister, Catherine, was born in 1457, so he was probably born after that, in 1458 or perhaps 1459.27 Nothing is known of his youth but being noble and related to the blood royal of England his education would follow the established pattern. It was generally believed that the best possible way of bringing up a child was to thrust him or her out of the family to learn the ways of the world. This practice amazed a Venetian diplomat: ‘The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested towards their children. For after keeping them at home till they arrive at the age of seven, or nine years at the utmost, they put them out...for everyone, however rich he be, sends away his children into the houses of others.’ (It is easy to see where the English public school system started.) Young Edward would have been sent away to a royal or noble household to be instructed in ‘polite learning’, which meant reading and writing in English and Latin. They were standard for nobles, gentry and the merchant classes. In addition there were ‘manly exercises’ and the art of pleasing elders and betters.

Both the King and Queen had their own training establishments. The King’s Ordinances make careful provision for the training of his six or seven pages. These boys were known as his ‘henchmen’ because they rode on either side of the haunch of their sovereign in ceremonial parades; they were looked after by the Master of Henchmen.28 Instruction also came from a range of manuals, and later Caxton produced his 
Book of Curtesye
, all with good advice for small boys (then and now): don’t slump, fidget, stick your finger in your nose, put your hands in your hose to scratch, etc. And: ‘Pick not your nose, nor that it be dropping with no pearls clear...And always beware of thy hinder part from guns blasting.’

The Queen’s establishment was attended by the young Duke of Buckingham and his brother for two years. She received £300 a year for looking after them and employed a schoolmaster, John Giles, at £2 a year for their tuition.

It was in the 1460s with his family flourishing at the centre of power that young Edward started to grow up. The King found the Woodvilles useful as he developed his own form of government; initially he used them as part of the counterbalance to the power and arrogance of the established nobility, but later also for their own abilities. Edward was to be educated and brought up to be a member of this ruling elite, a group that was to have its pleasures and its problems, with no half measures.

Edward Woodville’s eldest brother, Anthony, was the archetypal hero and something of a polymath. He was one of the Champions of England (a top tournament fighter), a poet and scholar, busy with land management as well as being an able administrator and military commander.1 There is strong circumstantial evidence that he and Edward were very close over the next ten years or so and, in all probability, Edward served first as his page and then as his squire.

Anthony’s abilities had been recognized when the King confirmed him in his wife’s title as Lord Scales, two years
before
his sister’s marriage to the King. But after his sister’s coronation he was given a more central role in serving King Edward.

It started with moves in a diplomatic game, brilliantly recorded: ‘One April morning in 1465 Lord Scales was holding converse with the Queen, kneeling before her with his bonnet sitting on the floor beside him. Suddenly, the ladies of the court surrounded him; one of them tied around his shapely thigh a collar of gold and pearls and dropped in his bonnet a little roll of parchment bound with gold thread.’ 2 It was a petition asking Anthony to challenge Antoine ‘le grand bâtard’, the Bastard of Burgundy, ‘a Knight of great renown’, to a two-day joust. Anthony was enthusiastic and so a herald rode off to deliver his challenge. The Bastard, who had recently returned from a crusade against the Moors, also liked the idea.3 But, duty before pleasure, the joust was for the future, as the Bastard was presently occupied, first in the war of the Public Weal (against France) and then in the destruction of Dinant. So it was a further two years before four Burgundian ships dressed with fluttering pennants brought the Bastard and his party, 400 of them, across the Channel and up the Thames to London. They stayed at the Bishop of Salisbury’s palace in Fleet Street which was ‘richly apparelled with arras and hanged with beds of cloth of gold’.

Tournaments were spectacular events designed to provide popular entertainment and a focus of national interest, as well as having a political purpose. England had enjoyed six years of Edward’s rule, the finances were back in order and it was time to show off. There had been a tournament at Eltham in April, four against four, where the King and Anthony had fought on the same side.4 But this one was going to be
the
spectacular, to take place at Smithfield where the lists, an area 90 yards (82 metres) long and 80 yards (73 metres) wide, had been carefully prepared and smoothed out with gravel. There were two grandstands, one for the king and court, the other for the mayor and citizens. They had cost a lavish £90 to construct.

On Thursday 11 June 1467 the stands were full and the crowds agog. Olivier de la Marche, who was with the Bastard, particularly approved the royal stand and reported it to be ‘very spacious and made in such a manner that there was an ascent by steps to the upper part where the King sat. He was clothed in purple, having the Garter on his thigh and a thick staff in his hand; and truly he seemed a person well worthy to be King for he was a tall handsome Prince, Kingly in manner. An earl held the Sword of State before him, a little on one side and around his throne were grouped twenty or twenty five councillors all with white hair.’

Below the King, sitting in massed ranks, were nobles, knights and squires. The Archers of the Crown were on parade and heralds, the Kings of Arms in full regalia complete with their crowns, were at each corner. The Earl of Worcester, as Constable of England, was the Master of Ceremony and the previous May he had issued new rules for jousts and tourneys, so everyone was clear about how affairs should be conducted.

The first to ride into the lists were the Duke of Clarence and the Earl of Arundel, each carrying a helmet for the Champion. Other lords carrying his battle-axe, lances and sword followed them, together with his nine horses, ridden by pages, all in flamboyant trappings. Anthony rode in alone; his horse had trappings ‘of white cloth of gold, with a cross of Saint George of crimson velvet, bordered with a fringe of gold half a foot long’. He did reverence to his king before going to his blue satin pavilion to arm. The Bastard, wearing the ducal arms, and his entourage made an equally impressive entrance.5

Eventually the two champions, encased in
alwite
– gleaming bleached–plate armour6 and mounted on their chargers, were ready at opposite ends of the lists, the horses no doubt snorting and stamping and the crowd expectant. When the trumpets sounded, the contestants loosed their reins and spurred their chargers forward. Their shields up and lances couched, they thundered towards each other...and missed completely. Giving up their lances and heaviest armour, they drew their swords and charged again. This time they crashed together. The Bastard’s horse gashed its nostril on Scales’s saddle; the ‘pain was so bad that the horse reared up and fell over backwards’. The Burgundian was extracted from under his unconscious horse and Anthony was obliged to prove he had not resorted to dirty tricks. The King offered the discomforted Burgundian another mount.7 ‘It is no season,’ said the Bastard and muttered to his friend, Olivier de la Marche, ‘Doubt not, he has fought a beast today, tomorrow he shall fight a man.’

The next day they resumed the tournament and set to with their battleaxes. These were poleaxes or ‘head’ axes, beautifully balanced weapons, some 4ft 6in (140cm) long with a head which combined a steel spike on the length for thrusting, an axe blade on one side and a hammer head on the other, used either for striking or tripping.8 The contest would have had the rhythm of a heavyweight boxing match, ducking and weaving with the added excitement of the wallop and thrust of top-class quarterstaff work or bayonet fighting.

Anthony, confident and flamboyant, did not bother to lower his visor and the spectators loved it. The contest was furious and became so violent that the King thought it should be stopped for fear of serious injury so shouted, ‘Whoa!’ and threw his staff down between them. Yet the combatants continued to exchange ‘two or three great strokes’ before breaking off their fight.9 Eventually the heated warriors were persuaded to take each other by the hand and promise ‘to love together as brothers in arms’.

‘The Lord Scales had the worship of the field’,10 but there was great debate over who had done best. The English believed Anthony was starting to hurt the Bastard, while the Burgundians took the opposite view. ‘Ask of them that felt the strokes, they can tell you best,’ suggests one contemporary scribe, while Fabyan reported that Anthony had ‘the point of his axe in the visor of the Bastard’s helmet and so by force was likely to have born him down’. Young Edward was then about nine years old and must have felt immensely proud of his elder brother.

The
Excerpta Historica
reports: ‘As for the King and Queen, they had caused a supper to be prepared on the second day of the tournament in the Grocers’ Hall; and thither came the ladies sixty or four score, of such noble houses that the least was the daughter of a Baron. And the supper was plentiful; and Mons. [Monsieur] The Bastard and his people feasted greatly and honourably.’ 11

There were other combatants who followed after the stars: the next pair who fought on foot on the Saturday and mounted on Sunday were Louis de Bretelles for Anthony and Jean de Chassa for the Bastard (de Chassa switched allegiance from Burgundy to France in 1470 and two years later was the Grand Senechal of Provence who arranged for the building of the towers at St Tropez).

King Edward had almost certainly engineered the original challenge and now used the occasion for informal talks on an alliance with Burgundy, one of England’s traditional allies. There had been a freeze in relations because her ruler, Duke Philip, the Bastard’s father, had Lancastrian blood on his mother’s side and disapproved of the Yorkist regime.