Margaret was still only thirteen at the time of Henry Tudor’s birth ‘and of very small stature’, according to her funeral sermon, delivered by Dr John Fisher. ‘It seemed a miracle that of so little a personage anyone should have been born at all.’ The baby was sickly and his survival of infancy was due only to his mother’s diligent care. For the first five years of his life, he would live at Pembroke Castle in the care of his devoted parent and his uncle Jasper.
Early in 1457 Pembroke cultivated a friendship with Buckingham, both men uniting to defend their Marcher properties, and in particular the lordships of Newport and Brecon, from the depredations of men of York’s affinity. In March, Pembroke and Margaret Beaufort were Buckingham’s guests at his manor of Greenfield, near Newport, and it was probably on this occasion that plans were formulated for Margaret to marry Buckingham’s younger son, Henry Stafford. This marriage, which took place about two years later, would cement the friendship between the two families and provide a secure home for the young widow, while Pembroke continued his efforts to establish a lasting peace in south Wales.
Meanwhile, disorder in England was escalating. The great magnates
had now taken to paying pirates to plunder foreign shipping. The pirates – and the magnates – got away with it, but the English merchants suffered as a result because many foreign traders refused to send goods to England or charged more for them. In London, there were further riots against Lombard merchants, and many had their houses sacked or burned down.
Yet still the court remained in the Midlands. The Queen was more preoccupied with consolidating her power than with ruling England. In January she had ordered a vast stock of arms and ammunition to be delivered to the royal castle at Kenilworth, and she had also replaced Shrewsbury as Treasurer with Wiltshire, while the notorious Thomas Tuddenham had been made treasurer of the royal household. The household itself had now extended its web of corruption to the shrievalty of England. No less than sixteen sheriffs were in its pay, receiving regular wages as if they were on the royal pay-roll. In return they were expected to favour those who supported the Queen’s party. Other sheriffs found themselves faced with demands for money in a kind of royal protection racket.
In April, Pembroke was appointed constable of the castles of Aberystwyth, Carmarthen and Carreg Cennen, in place of York. He carried out his new duties with diligence and success, even bringing to heel his old adversary, Gruffydd ap Nicholas, who would now remain faithful to the House of Lancaster for the remaining three years of his life.
Throughout the early months of 1457 the Queen’s agents were busy hunting for Sir William Herbert, who had dared to seize Carmarthen and imprison Richmond the previous year. Herbert had remained at large throughout the winter, harrying the countryside of south-east Wales and undermining the King’s authority. When he was at last captured, the Queen had him cast into the Tower of London. She wanted him executed, and York too, for she believed that Herbert had been acting on York’s orders, although there was no proof of this. Buckingham, ever the peacemaker, dissuaded her, and York was sent back to Dublin to resume his duties as Lieutenant of Ireland.
At the end of March 1457, Herbert and his accomplices stood trial at Hereford in the presence of the King, the Queen, Buckingham, Shrewsbury and, possibly, Pembroke. Although all were found guilty and sentenced to be attainted for treason, Herbert received a royal pardon in June and the other attainders were reversed in February 1458. Herbert’s pardon was enough to make him turn his coat, and for a time he and his brother Richard offered their loyalty to the Queen. His position was not easy, for most of his neighbours in south-east Wales were Yorkists, but he managed to balance the
interests of all the parties, retaining the friendship and trust of the Queen as well as that of his former allies.
Warwick, meanwhile, had established himself in Calais, and had been made aware of the problems of piracy in the Channel, and its effect on the London merchants. He had also found out that these problems were unlikely to be dealt with by the King since Henry’s navy comprised at that time just one ship. Warwick owned about ten ships, which he was soon using to good effect against French and Burgundian pirates; he also destroyed a hostile Spanish fleet.
Warwick was sensitive to the Londoners’ feelings about the Italian aliens in their midst, and when he learned that three Italian ships had been granted a special royal licence to load their vessels at Tilbury with unlimited English wool and woollen cloth, he sent a small flotilla across the Channel and up the Thames estuary to capture them. His deeds were regarded by the Londoners as nothing less than heroic, and won him tremendous popularity. Here, at last, was someone ready to champion the cause of the merchants, who were the source of much of England’s wealth yet were ignored and slighted by the Lancastrian government.
The Earl, who now spent much of his time travelling back and forth across the Channel, was at present building up a lavish establishment in London, where he kept open house, his aim being to court popularity by dispensing extravagant hospitality. When he was in residence there, six oxen were roasted every day at breakfast ‘and every tavern was full of his meat, for whoever had any acquaintance in his household could have as much roast as he might carry upon a large dagger’. Waurin says that Warwick
had in great measure the voice of the people because he knew how to persuade them with beautiful soft speeches. He was conversible and talked familiarly with them – subtle, as it were, in order to gain his ends. He gave them to understand that he would promote the prosperity of the kingdom and defend the interests of the people with all his power, and that as long as he lived he would never do otherwise. Thus he acquired the goodwill of the people of England to such an extent that he was the prince whom they held in the highest esteem and on whom they placed the greatest faith and reliance.
Warwick was the popular and charismatic face of the Yorkist party, having the dash and common touch that York lacked, and it was largely thanks to Warwick – and to Lancastrian misrule – that
the Yorkist party increased its following during these years. The Earl’s use of his great wealth to win it support was, naturally, not without self-interest, for he always had a sharp eye to his own self-aggrandisement.
Just how far Warwick was prepared to go to discredit the Lancastrians became apparent in August 1457. At that time the Queen was hoping to arrange a new peace treaty with France, so that she could call on her uncle, Charles VII, for military aid if necessary. As her go-between, she used one Dolcereau, who was the agent of her former admirer, Pierre de Brézé, now Grand Seneschal of Anjou, Poitou and Normandy, to carry highly sensitive communications to Richard de Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, England’s ambassador in France.
But that month Brézé himself landed a French fleet on the Kent coast, plundering and burning the town of Sandwich, which was almost destroyed. What made the raid so provocative was that the victorious French had been seen afterwards playing tennis in the smoking ruins of the town, before being eventually driven away by Sir Thomas Kyriell. The only comfort the townsfolk had was the satisfaction of knowing later that many Frenchmen drowned in the Channel, thanks to turbulent seas on the journey home.
The raid unnerved the English, who were alarmed at the government’s inability to prevent it, and the Queen was the target of furious criticism. In an attempt to deflect public anger from herself she tried to pin the blame for the raid on Exeter, who had been Lord High Admiral for the past ten years. No one was fooled by her excuses, and the Yorkists immediately spread word that the Queen had actually invited Brézé to raid the English coast in order to discredit the exploits of Warwick. No one thought to criticise Warwick, who had not lifted a finger against the French, and had indeed decided not to intercept them knowing that anything they might do would stir up feeling against the Lancastrians.
This wave of criticism of the Queen gave rise to a fresh crop of rumours about the supposed paternity of the Prince of Wales which named the late Duke of Somerset or the Queen’s current favourite, Wiltshire, as the child’s father. Margaret herself told Chastellain later that her son was branded a ‘false heir’ born in ‘false wedlock’.
Margaret incurred more opprobrium in September when she defied the King over the appointment of a new Bishop of Durham. She wanted her chancellor, Laurence Booth, to be preferred, while the King had nominated another candidate. Margaret secretly put considerable pressure on the Pope, and Booth was elected on 15 September.
At Michaelmas 1457 the court left Coventry. It had proved impossible for the administration to function effectively away from London, and reluctantly the Queen departed from her ‘safe harbour’ and returned south. She had rid herself of the Yorkists for the moment, but with Warwick in Calais and York in Dublin she did not feel safe. It was imperative that she be able to call upon an armed force if either of them threatened her position, yet such was the reputation of the government that she doubted if she could raise enough men to support her. There was only one solution to this problem, and the fact that she embraced it proves just how desperately insecure she felt.
The Queen introduced conscription, a measure hitherto employed in Western Europe only by the kings of France. That December she dispatched commissions of array to every shire, empowering the sheriffs to demand that every village, township and hamlet, according to its population and wealth, and as soon as she gave the command, provide the King with a number of able-bodied men and archers at its own expense, in order to defend the realm against the Yorkists. At the same time it was publicly proclaimed that Henry VI had written a letter to his Anglo-Irish subjects in Ireland, encouraging them to conquer that land (and hopefully kill York in battle in the process).
Henry VI was aware of the growing tensions at court and throughout his realm, but far from wishing to muster support for a new conflict he was determined to foster peace between the opposing factions. Whethamstead says he was fond of quoting St Matthew and saying that ‘every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation’. In January 1458 he commanded that the magnates attend a peace conference at Westminster. It lasted for two months, but achieved only superficial success. One face was missing. One of the Queen’s most valued supporters, the Earl of Devon, had died – some said by poison – at Abingdon Abbey in January, with Margaret at his side.
The fragile concord of the peace congress was brutally disrupted in February when the vengeful Lord Clifford arrived at the head of a large army at Temple Bar in the company of his cousin, the young Earl of Northumberland, and his kinsman, the Duke of Somerset. All three were demanding compensation for the deaths of their fathers at St Albans. So intimidated was the King that’ he had no choice but to agree. He commanded that York, Salisbury and Warwick collaborate to found and endow a chantry at St Albans, in which masses for the souls of the three dead lords and others killed in the battle could be sung in perpetuity. He also ordered the Yorkist
lords to pay Clifford, Northumberland and Somerset a ‘notable sum of money’, which they did. York paid Somerset’s widow 5000 marks, while Warwick paid the Clifford family 1000 marks. The chantry was duly founded the following March, and a proclamation was issued informing the people of what had been done.
The peace conference resulted in a staged public display of amity between the two warring factions. On 24 March 1458, which was Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation, there was an official ceremony of reconciliation between the King and Queen and the Yorkist lords which was afterwards referred to as the ‘Loveday’. The King, followed by the Queen and York, walking hand in hand, the leaders of both factions, the Nevilles, the Percies and other lords, went in procession through the streets of London to St Paul’s Cathedral, where a service of reconciliation was held. ‘There was between them a lovely countenance’, and they ‘spared right nought in sight of the commonalty, in token that love was in heart and thought’.
The King and Archbishop Bourchier had laboured to bring about this reconciliation, and Henry was overjoyed that his initiative had produced such a visible result. ‘Rejoice, England, in concord and unity!’ exclaimed a popular ballad commemorating the occasion, and his subjects were only too glad to do so, hoping that this was a complete and final reconciliation. But Robert Fabyan, the Tudor chronicler, was nearer the truth when he referred to the event as ‘this dissimulated Loveday’, for lining the streets had been the retainers and supporters of the rival parties, many of them heavily armed, and most of them regarding each other with ill-concealed animosity.
Three days after the Loveday Henry and Margaret made a state entry into London and took up residence in the bishop’s palace. York returned to Ludlow, Salisbury to Middleham and Warwick to Calais, and everyone waited to see what would happen next. The King, happily believing that his factious nobles were at peace with each other, kept Easter alone at St Albans Abbey. He was becoming more absorbed in his devotions and his foundations, retreating from political life, and leaving most executive decisions to the Queen.
When he arrived at Calais, Warwick began courting the friendship of Philip of Burgundy, whose ships he had recently so cheerfully plundered. The merchants of Calais and those in England were anxious to preserve the important trade links between England and Burgundy, and this was Warwick’s response. By the summer of 1458 he had reached an understanding with Duke Philip and had dispatched Sir John Wenlock, now serving under him at Calais, to
the Duke to negotiate on the King’s behalf – without consulting Henry – a marriage between the Prince of Wales and a Burgundian princess. Afterwards, Wenlock went to France on Queen Margaret’s behalf to open negotiations with Charles VII for the Prince’s marriage to a French princess. Not surprisingly these negotiations were complicated and long drawn out, but they did have the advantage of keeping both France and Burgundy well disposed towards England for the time being.