After Gloucester’s death, the vultures descended. The Queen was given his manor of Placentia at Greenwich, a magnificent house set in lovely ‘gardens of pleasaunce’. Margaret immediately arranged for extensive building works to be undertaken there: new latticed windows were installed, others were re-glazed, terracotta floor tiles bearing the Queen’s monogram were laid, and new pillars carved with marguerites were erected outside. A great chamber was built for the Queen’s own use, as well as a parlour and a gallery overlooking the gardens, where an arbour was put up. Finally, new tapestries were hung. In the refurbished house – now a palace – ‘disguisings’ or pageants were mounted for the entertainment of the King and court.
Gloucester’s greatest rival did not long enjoy his triumph. Cardinal Beaufort was now well over seventy and nearing death. By 1447 he had virtually retired from political life, although his party remained dominant under the leadership of the Cardinal’s protegés, Suffolk and Somerset. On 15 March 1447, Beaufort died at Wolvesey Palace at Winchester; he was buried in the nearby cathedral, where a fine effigy wearing a cardinal’s hat adorns his tomb.
With his death, the government lost one of its chief financial mainstays. The Cardinal left one last bequest of £2000 to the King but Henry refused it because he felt that his uncle had given him enough during his lifetime. ‘The Lord will reward him,’ said Henry. Beaufort’s nonplussed executors protested, urging that the money be used for the King’s educational foundations; Henry, to their relief, agreed.
Somerset was now head of the powerful Beaufort family, and was also the King’s nearest Lancastrian relative. Again there were rumours that he would be named heir presumptive despite the existence of letters patent barring the Beauforts from the succession. Somerset, having inherited his uncle’s fortune, was now a very wealthy man, and was accorded precedence as a full prince of the blood. The King relied heavily on his counsel and showered him with gifts and honours, which aroused the resentment of other magnates, especially York, who justifiably regarded Somerset as a threat to his own position.
Together with Suffolk, Somerset now led the court party, both men enjoying the full confidence of the King and Queen. Suffolk was at the zenith of his power: around this time he was promoted to the influential offices of Chamberlain of England, Captain of Calais,
Warden of the Cinque Ports, Chief Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster north of the Trent, Chief Justice of Chester, Flint and North Wales, and steward and surveyor of mines for the whole country.
With Gloucester dead, there was no one to lead the protest about the surrender of Maine and Anjou, and in the spring of 1447 a French embassy arrived to conclude the matter. This provoked another storm, but again it was not the King who was the object of his subjects’ patriotic indignation – it was Suffolk, who had become the scapegoat for Henry and his councillors and was widely perceived as the villain of the piece. If he had been unpopular before, he was now loathed. The people blamed him for the downward slide of England’s fortunes in France and for giving up Henry V’s conquests in return for a dowerless queen.
In May, Suffolk offered the Council a satisfactory explanation of his actions, but this did not mollify the commons, who were now blaming him for all the ills that had befallen the realm, especially the faction-fighting in Council – for which he was, to a degree, responsible – the government’s failure to pay its soldiers in France, the embargo placed on the import of English cloth by the hostile Duke of Burgundy, and the near-bankruptcy of the kingdom.
By 27 July negotiations with the French were complete. Henry VI agreed to surrender Maine by 1 November provided compensation was paid to his garrison in the province. On the following day he appointed commissioners to transfer Maine and Anjou to Charles VII.
The Queen also shared in the unpopularity of the court party. In June the keeper of Gloucester Castle arrested a man who had been overheard lamenting the coming of the Queen to England, a sentiment probably shared by many of the King’s subjects. For them, Margaret was irrevocably associated with Suffolk and the loss of Maine and Anjou, and neither the Queen nor the Earl improved matters when they attempted to evade customs duties on the export of wool and alienated the English merchants, who had hitherto been staunch supporters of the Crown.
With the deaths of Gloucester and Beaufort the Queen’s influence grew. Every letter signed by the King was now backed up by a similar one from the Queen, who demanded that she be kept informed on all political matters, especially negotiations with France and military and financial affairs. State papers and reports on seditious persons were submitted for her inspection, and neither Suffolk nor Somerset, nor their associates Cardinal Kempe, Bishop of Chichester, and Lord Say, would act without Margaret’s approval.
It could therefore be said with some truth that an eighteen-year-old girl was effectively ruling England.
By the end of 1447 it was apparent that the emergence of the Queen on to the political stage had given birth to a new factional rivalry to replace that of Gloucester and Beaufort. Beaufort’s peace party had become the court party, headed by the Queen, Suffolk and Somerset, which controlled the King and the government. The opposing faction comprised a group of lords who had, for various reasons, been excluded from this charmed circle, mainly because they upheld the ideals for which Gloucester had fought for most of his career, or were critical of the ruling party. This faction now looked to York to lead them.
The court party feared York, had consistently blocked his attempt to participate in government, and had been searching for ways to neutralise his influence. As with Gloucester, they wanted him out of the way. On 9 December 1447 he was appointed the King’s Lieutenant in Ireland for a term of ten years. This ill-conceived appointment was the brainchild of Suffolk, and it was obvious to York that he was being sentenced to virtual exile. Hence he managed to delay his departure for two years.
York had rendered loyal service, digging deep into his coffers to finance his expenditure on behalf of the Crown. Not once had he displayed any inclination to press his superior claim to the throne. Yet Henry and his advisers now treated him as an enemy; and by their wholly unjustifiable slights against one who was a prince of the blood and premier magnate of the realm, they made him an enemy.
November came and went, and still Henry VI had not handed over Maine and Anjou. In February 1448, Charles VII, tired of his prevarications, led his armies into Maine and laid siege to the city of Le Mans. When the garrison claimed it could not hold out, Henry at last agreed on a formal surrender, which took place on 16 March and was conditional upon the truce being extended until April 1450. In England, the surrender was greeted with anger and bitterness. A worried Queen urged Henry to promise financial compensation to dispossessed English landowners returning from Maine, which he did, though the money was never forthcoming and this created more ill-feeling. So did the fact that the Queen’s father had fought at King Charles’s side in Maine, which did not endear Margaret any more to the English though in fact it had caused her great distress. Naturally, it was she and Suffolk who bore the brunt of public opprobrium.
In the spring of 1448 the King demonstrated his confidence in the leaders of the court party by creating Edmund Beaufort Duke of
Somerset, which meant that his twelve-year-old son Henry was now styled Earl of Dorset, and William de la Pole was created Duke of Suffolk. This was the first time that ducal rank had been conferred on anyone other than members or relatives of the royal family, and reflects the enormous influence and prestige enjoyed by Suffolk. Possibly Henry wished to raise the two men at court to equal rank with York, and it may have been in response that York began using the surname Plantagenet, which had been in abeyance since the twelfth century, when it had been borne by Count Geoffrey of Anjou, father of Henry II.
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York adopted it in order to emphasise his royal connections and proximity to the throne, implying, perhaps, that it should have been he who was advising the King, not an upstart like Suffolk or a magnate tainted by bastard descent such as Somerset. There is no evidence, however, that York at this date had any designs on the throne, and it would be more than a decade before he himself would dispute Henry’s title.
In 1448, York’s chief concern was that the King would repudiate Henry IV’s letters patent and declare Somerset his heir. He felt, quite justifiably, that the elevation of Somerset was a deliberate attempt to block his own political and dynastic ambitions, and knew that it was Suffolk and Somerset, and not the King, who were responsible for his political exile. Thus the rivalry of York with the two men now crystallised into a deadly political feud that would have serious repercussions throughout the next two decades. The situation was such that a man could not support one side without being deemed the enemy of the other.
Somerset and the Queen began a whispering campaign, spreading rumours that York, by calling himself Plantagenet, was plotting treason, intending to mount a coup and take the throne. Tainted with suspicion and impeded by his own aloofness and arrogance, York found it increasingly difficult to win the support of his fellow magnates. At length, says Waurin, in 1449, York was ‘expelled from court and exiled to Ireland’, this being ‘provoked by the Duke of Suffolk and other members of his party’, including Somerset, who was ‘responsible for these deeds’ and ‘overjoyed’ at the Duke’s departure. York’s post was no sinecure, for Ireland at that time was a land riven by tribal feuds and struggles. His achievements there were modest, but he did win the favour and affection of the Anglo-Irish
settlers and even some of the native Irish, thus establishing a long-standing affinity between Ireland and the House of York.
That same year, at a salary of £20,000, Somerset, as Governor of Normandy and chief commander of the English forces in France, took up residence at Rouen, capital of the duchy. His appointment, says Waurin, was ‘due to the solicitation and exhortation of the Queen and of some of the barons in power’. The truce with France still held, but the Duke was assured that his allowance would be paid even if war did break out. There is, however, no evidence that he ever received it.
As commander-in-chief Somerset was a failure, having neither ability nor capacity for the job. Waurin says he carried out his duties ‘so negligently that afterwards, due to his misconduct, the whole country was returned to the control of the King of France’, and in fact his term of office marked the beginning of the end for the English in France. In March 1449, Henry VI himself, urged on by Suffolk, broke the truce and reopened hostilities, authorising an attack on the Breton town of Fougères, which the English speedily occupied. The onslaught made nonsense of Henry’s much-vaunted desire for peace and effectively amounted to a new declaration of war. It gave the French the opportunity they had been waiting for, and in June they launched a full-scale attack on Normandy, determined to reconquer it. In July, Charles VII formally declared war on England.
Fears were voiced that the French offensive would lead to the ‘shameful loss’ of Normandy, the centre of English power in France, ‘which God ever defend’, and by 15 August, according to the chronicler Henry Benet, ‘about thirty fortified towns in Normandy were lost’. Charles VII’s status among the monarchs of Europe was now in the ascendant, and his victories gave both him and his subjects new confidence and the impetus to carry to a successful conclusion what had been begun.
In the late summer of 1449, his armies overran Normandy and began an assault upon Rouen, which had been in the hands of the English for thirty years. Somerset agreed to discuss terms and to withdraw from Rouen if the French would leave the English in possession of the towns they held along the Norman coast. This was agreed, and in October the Duke surrendered Rouen to the victorious French, handing over the veteran John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury and others as hostages. The cheering citizens, who regarded King Charles as their liberator, then flung open the gates and welcomed him and his army with ecstatic rejoicing. Somerset, says Benet, ‘fled to Caen’. The French were now determined to have
all, and soon broke their agreement with the Duke. In December, the ports of Harfleur – so dearly won by Henry V – and Honfleur fell to Charles VII.
By now, the disastrous effects of the peace policy were plain to see, and the mood of the English people was ugly. Rumours were spread alleging that Margaret was not René’s daughter but a bastard, and therefore unfit to be Queen of England. Public anger was also fuelled by high food prices and the profligate alienation of crown lands. In July, Parliament had ventured to suggest that an Act of Resumption be passed, which would revoke all grants of land and annuities made by the King since his accession, but Henry, manipulated by those who had profited by such grants, had refused to authorise it; instead, he had dissolved Parliament.
But it was Suffolk who was the real target of the people’s hatred. Few Council records for this period survive, which suggests that the Duke had often acted independently of the Council and taken upon himself much of the important business of government. He was doing the House of Lancaster no favours, for its prosperity depended upon a Council that was publicly perceived to be united and equitable. Instead, thanks in no small measure to Suffolk, it was riven by factions, excluded from decisions affecting the weightier affairs of state and its reputation was now such that many people had lost all confidence in it, seeing it purely as the focus for the private ambitions of the landed aristocracy.
The virulent criticisms of Suffolk greatly alarmed the Queen, and she urged Henry to deal forcefully with his fractious subjects. He, who had also to consult Parliament on the critical situation in France, summoned it to meet on 6 November. There were many who perceived that Suffolk was unlikely to survive this latest storm with his power intact; his supporters, guessing that this was the end for him, hastened to dissociate themselves from him, some even resigning from their posts in the royal household. His enemies were poised for the kill.