Tower: An Epic History of the Tower of London (19 page)

Warwick joined forces with Edward while the victorious Lancastrians celebrated their win by pillaging St Albans. Their behaviour terrified Londoners, who feared anarchy if the unruly armed mob were let loose in their prosperous city. Margaret was in a dilemma. On the one hand London was a tempting prize, particularly the Tower, with its plentiful supplies of artillery and military gadgetry. On the other, her army was diminishing as homesick Scots deserted and staggered northwards, loaded with plunder, while the joint forces of Edward and Warwick grew stronger. Playing for time, the city’s aldermen barred London’s gates against her while they negotiated to save the city from sack.

While Margaret hesitated, Edward struck. He and Warwick entered London on 26 February. Acclaimed by relieved Londoners, Edward’s first act was to seize the Tower. The fortress would become his favourite residence – he would enjoy relaxing there with his mistresses and cronies – but there was no time for dalliance now. To secure his position he had decisively to defeat the Lancastrians. He scoured the Tower for every cannon in its arsenal. Lazy and lascivious by nature, Edward could rouse himself to furious activity when occasion demanded, only to lapse into indolence when the crisis had passed. An inspiring military leader – perhaps his greatest qualification as a ruler – like Oliver Cromwell, he never lost a battle.

Now Edward knew what had to be done, and did it with the decision of an experienced ruler rather than the nineteen-year-old youth he was. He formally claimed the Crown on 4 March and no one in London disputed it. The leading Lancastrian lords were retreating north with Henry and Margaret, and given the choice of the two Edwards – the seven-year-old son of Henry and Margaret or this strapping ‘sun of York’ – Londoners did not have to think twice before deciding the new Edward IV was their man.

Edward issued commissions of array, conscripting every available man between sixteen and sixty, and within days was marching north with an enormous army. Muster rolls indicated that some 36,000 men gathered at
Pontefract Castle where Edward concentrated his command on 27 March. The Lancastrians had an even larger host around York, where around 42,000 were mustered. Most of the available English peerage were here – the majority (nineteen) still on the Lancastrian side, while only eight fought for the Yorkists. It was clear that the coming battle would be a showdown in which fierce family hatreds would run unchecked, and the great dynastic question would be put to the supreme test.

The battle that followed, Towton, was the biggest, longest and bloodiest in English history – surpassing even the first day of the Somme on its casualty list. On Palm Sunday 1461, on a high snow-swept Yorkshire plateau south of York, the great Lancastrian host faced an only slightly smaller Yorkist army. Fought toe to toe without quarter, Towton ended with the Yorkists, led by the charismatic Edward, cracking the Lancastrian line and chasing them into a swollen stream which became a mass of hacked bodies so that the white water ran red for three miles. Many Lancastrian lords died in the slaughter, and the Lancastrian royal family – Henry, Margaret and little Prince Edward – fled from York as news of the disaster reached them.

The bloodbath at Towton was decisive. The Lancastrians were shattered both militarily and politically, as Edward IV’s biographer, Charles Ross, noted: ‘For most Englishmen, including a majority amongst the barons and gentry, it now became prudent and realistic to acknowledge the authority of the new king.’ Edward established his House of York on the throne with the support of most of the country – especially in the south and east. His rule, however, was far from secure. The deposed royal family and their entourage, including the Dukes of Somerset and Exeter, took refuge in Scotland, where they licked their wounds and plotted their next move.

On 26 June the victorious Edward IV formally re-entered London, riding through the streets of the city amidst cheering crowds until he reached the Tower, where the royal apartments in the palace had been refurbished for their new occupant. The next night passed in the traditional pre-coronation vigil, with Edward creating thirty-two new Knights of the Bath, emphasising that although the throne was under new occupation, continuity, rather than radical change, would mark the Yorkist regime. On 28 June, Edward processed amidst more popular acclaim from the Tower to Westminster Abbey for his coronation. Edward’s character was
a curious mixture of cruelty and conciliation. He could be completely ruthless when acting against his enemies. At the same time, he spared some who he might have eliminated. These even included the man who had led the Lancastrian army at Wakefield – killing his father, brother and uncle in the process – at the second St Albans, and at Towton: Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.

Following Towton, Somerset led resistance to Yorkist rule in Northumbria based on the great castles of Alnwick – seat of the mighty Percy family – Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh on the coast. Repeatedly changing hands, the castles remained a thorn in Edward’s side until Somerset surrendered all three of them at the end of 1462, on the understanding that his life would be spared and that he would give his allegiance to Edward. The king was as good as his word. In fact, better. Not only did Edward pardon Somerset, he also bestowed his favour on other members of the Beaufort family. He released Somerset’s younger brother, Edmund, from the Tower, where he had been confined since Towton, and gave lavish annuities to his mother and brother-in-law. Somerset himself was literally taken into the king’s bed in the Tower. Wonderingly, the chronicler William Gregory reported:

And the king made full much of him in so much that he lodged with the king in his own bed many nights, and sometimes rode a hunting behind the king, the king having about him not passing six horse[men] at the most and yet three were the duke’s men. The king loved him well, but the duke thought treason under fair cheer and words …

The thought of the victorious and the vanquished commanders from the great charnel house of Towton carousing between the same sheets at the Tower may seem strange, but it was common for medieval men to share a bed without there being any sexual implications. Indeed, it seems that Somerset shared Edward’s macho heterosexual tastes, and the two men went hunting for woman as well as game. The politics behind Edward’s behaviour were clear enough: as the most powerful mainstays of the Lancastrian cause, the Beauforts were well worth winning over. Edward’s support base among the nobility was still too narrow for comfort, and the Beauforts’ backing would cement his hold on power.

But the pull of Somerset’s hereditary Lancastrian loyalties proved stronger than a lads’ friendship founded on a mutual taste for the chase. Edward’s pampering of Somerset had infuriated his closest allies, such as
his chamberlain, Lord William Hastings, and the mighty Warwick. But Edward stuck by his new friend. He took Somerset and 200 men of his affinity north on a peacemaking tour of Yorkshire in the summer of 1463. They halted at Northampton, the town still smarting from its sack in 1461 by Somerset’s ravaging Lancastrian army marching from Wakefield. When locals discovered ‘the false duke and traitor was so nigh the king’s presence’, their rage knew no bounds, and only Edward ‘with fair speech and great difficulty’ saved Somerset from a lynching. The king mollified the mob with a cask of wine, and while they were drinking it he smuggled Somerset to safety, sending him to Chirk Castle in North Wales.

The Northampton lynch mob proved a catalyst for Somerset. After ‘ratting’ once, now he ‘re-ratted’ and urged local Lancastrians in Wales to rebel and restore Henry VI to the throne. That luckless monarch had been left in the north after Towton by his wife, who had returned to her native France with Prince Edward to drum up support for the Lancastrians. Henry was left with a handful of diehard followers in Bamburgh Castle, where he was joined by Somerset early in 1464. But their forces numbered no more than 500 men – a fraction of the great host smashed at Towton.

King Edward was taking no chances. He knew that the trio of mighty Northumbrian castles, Alnwick, Dunstanburgh and Bamburgh – now again held by Somerset – could provide a springboard for a Lancastrian comeback. So he turned to the Tower’s armoury to find the big guns to combat the threat. He plundered the fortress’s arsenal of its five great siege guns, called
Edward, London, Newcastle, Dijon
and
Richard Bombardel
. As this formidable battery, commanded by the Earl of Warwick, creaked its slow way north along muddy roads, pulled by ox carts, Warwick’s younger brother, John Neville, was sent ahead by the earl.

Neville destroyed Somerset’s tiny army in two skirmishes at Hedgeley Moor and Hexham in the spring of 1464. Somerset was captured and unceremoniously beheaded. Edward would not make the mistake of trusting a Beaufort again. Neville was rewarded by being created Earl of Northumberland, the title traditionally held by the Nevilles’ great northern rivals, the vanquished Lancastrian Percys. When Warwick arrived with his siege train the garrisons of Alnwick and Dunstanburgh took one look at the Tower’s great guns and surrendered on the promise of a free pardon without a shot being fired. Bamburgh proved a tougher nut to crack.

Warwick sent his herald forward to threaten the castle’s commander, Sir Ralph Grey:

If ye deliver not this jewel [Bamburgh], the which the King, our most dread sovereign lord, hath so greatly in favour, seeing it marcheth so nigh his ancient enemies in Scotland, he specially desireth to have it unbroken with ordinance, if ye suffer any great gun [to be] laid unto the wall and be shot, and prejudice the wall, it shall cost you the chieftain’s head, and so proceeding for every gun shot to the least head of any person within the said place.

But this dire threat had no effect. Grey, like Somerset, had submitted to Edward after Towton, only to revert to his original Lancastrian allegiance in 1463. He knew that his life was forfeit for this betrayal and grimly fought on. Reluctantly, Warwick gave the order for the Tower’s mighty guns to open fire. The great iron cannons
Newcastle
and
London
sent their shot hurtling into Bamburgh’s walls. The castle’s stonework flew into the sea, while the bronze
Dijon
, a more modern Burgundian weapon, accurately hit Grey’s bedchamber, dislodging a chunk of masonry and knocking out the commander. While Grey was out cold, his deputy, Humphrey Neville, agreed to surrender in return for a pardon, and opened the castle gates. The injured Grey was taken to Doncaster and tried before the constable of England, the sadistic John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, who ordered his immediate execution.

King Henry vanished for more than a year, leaving behind only a few pathetic belongings, including his crown and a spoon. He was sheltered by loyal northern gentry, shuttling between their homes and sometimes – appropriately for such a pious man – disguised as a monk seeking sanctuary at religious houses. In July 1465 the fugitive king was hiding at Waddington Hall near Clitheroe in Lancashire, the home of the Tempest family, under the care of his former carver and chamberlain, Sir Richard Tunstall. But one member of the family, John Tempest, did not share his relatives’ Lancastrian loyalty. Informed by a treacherous monk of the mystery guest at the hall, Tempest organised a posse. When they arrived, a furious struggle ensued. Tunstall held the pursuers off – breaking John Tempest’s arm in the process – while Henry, accompanied only by two chaplains and a single squire, made off into nearby Clither Wood. Later that afternoon Henry and his companions were caught crossing the River Ribble by stepping stones, and arrested.

Humiliatingly, Henry, wearing a straw hat in the summer heat, was mounted on a poor thin nag; his feet were bound under the stirrups by leather thongs and, lashed to his saddle with rope, he was brought to London. He was received at Islington by Warwick and led through the city’s streets towards the Tower, a placard scrawled with insults around his neck. It was a tragic and frightening return to his capital for the mentally frail fallen monarch. As the forlorn little procession rode through Cheapside, Cornhill and Newgate, ribald crowds of Londoners followed their progress, yelling abuse and hurling refuse and stones at the helpless captive. The saintly Henry heard his wife called a whore, and worse, before the Tower’s gates mercifully closed behind him, muffling the hostile jeers. It was to be his home for the last decade of his sad life.

While Henry had been on the run, the kingdom he had lost had enjoyed a brief respite from civil strife. But King Edward lapsed into idle self-indulgence now the pressure was off. His main vices were gluttony – like a Roman patrician he would give himself emetics after a hearty meal, for the pleasure of vomiting and then gorging himself all over again – and lechery. Although his greed made him obese, it was his lust that did Edward the real damage. Both vices were indulged in to the full at the Tower. The king spent more time at his castle palace than any previous monarch. It is a piquant thought that while poor, pious Henry eked out a thin existence as Edward’s captive in the Wakefield Tower, reading the Bible and his breviary, praying in his private oratory, eating the frugal meals of a prisoner, and patiently enduring his harsh lot, a few feet away, in the Tower palace, Edward was feasting and fornicating with his mistresses and cronies.

Separated by only a couple of walls, the contrast between the lives of the pathetic fallen king and his sybaritic supplanter was a painful one. Although Henry was allowed visitors – by permission of his jailers – all such contacts were carried out under the watchful eyes of five of Edward’s trusties. For company, Henry was permitted a dog and a pet sparrow. For human association, he was allowed around a dozen attendants, including a priest, William Kymberley, who celebrated a daily Mass for him. The captive claimed, probably truthfully, that so long as he was allowed the Sacraments he did not mind the loss of his earthly kingdom. Although occasionally sent wine from Edward’s cellars when the king remembered his forlorn prisoner, and granted an allowance of velvet cloth for his gowns and doublets, Henry had never been a drinker or a fashion icon.
Even in the days of his pomp, his simple homespun clothes and old-fashioned square-toed shoes had been mocked by modish courtiers. So Henry stayed in his lonely Tower, as one dull day succeeded another, his thin hands joined in prayer around a guttering candle, resigned to whatever fate more worldly men had in store for him.