FOR FEAR of introducing too many major characters, I have made little of Exeter’s role in the north, a strong and violent ally of the Percys, though he was married to York’s eldest daughter. This was truly a civil war, with families torn between the sides. One of York’s first acts as Protector was to have his son-in-law Exeter imprisoned in Pontefract Castle, the keys given to Salisbury. When King Henry recovered in 1455, Exeter was released from Pontefract. Somerset was also released from the Tower and was quickly back at the king’s side as his chief adviser.
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THERE IS NO RECORD of those present at the birth of Edward of Lancaster, only son to Margaret and King Henry. Until very recent times, however, it was common practice to have numerous witnesses to royal births. For example, Queen Victoria’s son Albert was born in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, two dukes, and seven other lords. For Edward of Lancaster (sometimes called Edward of Westminster, where he was born) there were indeed rumors that Somerset was the father, though it was likely to have been no more than a slander spread by Yorkist supporters. There is little doubt that Somerset and York hated each other with a bitter intensity.
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WHEN HENRY VI WOKE from his stupor on Christmas Day 1454, he had been in a semiconscious state for almost eighteen months. He had no recollection of anything that had taken place over that time, though he was not in a coma, more a dissociative, listless waking dream. He did not remember having been shown his son, Edward, Prince of Wales. Though he had, in theory, been awake and present for the kiss of homage from a new Archbishop of Canterbury, he had no memory of that event either.
In reality, it was two more months into 1455 before King Henry was well enough to travel to London. There, he dismissed York and Salisbury from their posts and set about regaining his authority over the country with a massive Judicial Progress north from London. It was a unique period of energy for the king, completely different to his personality before the collapse. York and Salisbury traveled to Ludlow Castle.
York had ruled with sense and style for his period as Protector and Defender of the Realm. Though not above favoring his Neville allies, he had reduced the size of the king’s household, cutting huge numbers of servants, knights, and even horses from the expenses. It is true he confirmed Edward of Lancaster as the royal heir, perhaps because the sympathies of the country were still with the damaged king. In the twenty-first century, it is perhaps a little difficult to comprehend the level of unthinking loyalty King Henry inspired simply by his bloodline and office. A king was anointed by God, with a divine right to rule over lesser houses. To challenge that was literally blasphemy and a path to tread very lightly indeed.
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NOTE ON TITLES: While it is true that “Your Majesty” was not the common term for royalty in the reign of King Henry VI, and that “Your Highness” or “Your Grace” would have been more common, it was in use, as evidenced by York’s letter in May 1455, where he complained to the king about the rumors spread about his “faith, lygeaunce and dewtee” (faith, allegiance and duty) by his enemies “under the whinge (wing) of your Magestee Royal.”
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NOTE ON THE EARL OF WARWICK, later known as the “Kingmaker”: Nothing is known of his childhood, or the way he looked physically. The younger Richard Neville made an extraordinarily fortunate marriage to Anne Beauchamp, daughter of the Earl of Warwick. When the earl died, his son Henry became earl and then died at only twenty-three, leaving a three-year-old daughter who also died.
The rights to the title then passed to Anne—and to her husband, Richard Neville. At the age of barely twenty-one, he became Earl of Warwick, Newburgh, and Aumarle, Baron of Elmley and Hanslape, Lord of Glamorgan and Morgannoc. His new estates were these: land in South Wales and Herefordshire including the castles of Cardiff, Neath, Caerphilly, Llantrussant, Seyntweonard, Ewyas Lacy, Castle-Dinas, Snodhill, Whitchurch, and Maud’s Castle. Caerphilly alone was a fortress to resist ten thousand men. In Gloucestershire, another seven wealthy manors. In Worcestershire, three great manors, the castle of Elmley, and twenty-four other manors. In Warwickshire, besides the incredible castle and town itself, nine more manors, including Tamworth. In Oxfordshire, five manors as well as lands in Kent, Hampshire, Sussex, Essex, Hertfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Northampton, Stafford, Cambridge, Rutland, and Nottingham—another forty-eight manors in all. In the distant north, just one possession: Barnard’s Castle on the Tees. So: twelve major castles, a hundred and forty-three manors, from the border of Scotland to Devon, making his union with Anne Beauchamp one of the most materially rewarding in English history. Perhaps it is not surprising that his father’s will left him only two chargers (large dishes), twelve smaller dishes, a ewer and basin of silver, a bed, and four untrained horses.
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THE BATTLE OF ST. ALBANS in 1455 was preceded by a number of letters sent to the king by Richard of York, at least two of which were received en route. Although York dared not name Queen Margaret, he pleaded with the king to resist the malign influence of “traitors about the king”—men like the Duke of Somerset. York was convinced King Henry was surrounded by those with ill intent. Again and again, he protested his loyal allegiance, to no avail.
With the forces of Salisbury and Warwick, some three thousand soldiers camped in Key Field, east of St. Albans, to await the king. King Henry’s forces arrived around nine or ten in the morning and crossed Halywell stream to head uphill to the open market. Heralds were exchanged and Henry refused all York’s demands. It is not known exactly when the fighting began, though the king’s party clearly had time to block the three roads in from the east.
There are many examples in history when two forces facing each other will interact and begin a bloody conflict, regardless of the desires of their leaders. Alternatively, Salisbury may have given the order. He, at least, had a very clear desire for conflict, with both Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and Thomas, Baron Egremont, within reach at last. For Salisbury, the moment to repay the attack on his son’s wedding and settle old scores was at hand.
It was the twenty-six-year-old Earl of Warwick who broke through back gardens with a small force and ran uphill to the marketplace. Warwick’s archers shot along St. Peter’s Street and both King Henry and the Duke of Buckingham were struck and wounded in the first moments. It is true that Buckingham was struck in the face, though he survived.
With Warwick’s breakthrough, the stalemate at the barricades was at an end. York and Salisbury made a quick entry into the town as soon as those defending the barricades left them to protect the king. In a very short time, the marketplace and surrounding roads were crammed with up to five thousand fighting men, crushed and panicking. Abbot Whethamstede’s description of the scene, written after the battle, is especially vivid: “. . . one man with his brain struck out, another with his arm struck off, there a third with his throat cut, there a fourth with his chest pierced, and the whole place beyond filled with the corpses of the slain.”
York himself gave the order for the wounded king to be taken to the abbey. The battle might have ended then if the only key players had been Lancaster and York. The exact sequence of events at this point is unknown. I have gone with what I consider to be the most likely scenario, that once the king was taken to the abbey, the real reason for the battle was pushed to its conclusion: the deaths of Somerset and Earl Percy.
It is true that Somerset died under the sign of The Castle pub, fulfilling a prophecy from years before that he would “die under the castle.” For years, he had avoided Windsor Castle, to avoid fulfilling the prophecy. One account of the battle says that Somerset came out from The Castle inn and killed four men with an ax before he was brought down.
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AS A SIDE NOTE, the Earl of Wiltshire, Henry’s treasurer, decided to make his escape from the fray by casting off his armor, heading to the abbey, and disguising himself as a monk. I cou
ld not resist giving that part to Derry Brewer.
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THE PROCESSION THROUGH LONDON, where York walked hand in hand with Queen Margaret behind the king and gave Henry his crown at St. Paul’s Cathedral is a combination of two real events. Historically, the first procession took place just a few days after the battle of St. Albans in 1455 and involved Henry riding through London with York on his right, Salisbury on his left, and Warwick ahead, carrying the king’s own sword. That “joyous occasion” ended at St. Paul’s Cathedral, where the king apparently insisted on being handed his crown by York. Assuming he understood what was going on, that humiliation must have been exquisitely painful for Henry. The second procession was later, when York walked hand in hand through London with Margaret as a public display of healed rifts. The sad truth is that the king was a mere puppet of York at this point. His most powerful lords had been killed at St. Albans and four years would pass before the House of Lancaster was once again in a position to fight back.
PART TWO: 1459–1461
THE YEARS MISSING from this novel were not entirely without incident. King Henry suffered another collapse, allied to a fear of the sight of blood that he developed and never lost. York was appointed Protector for a second time—and for a second time, the king returned to London and removed him from his post. Repetition does not make a good tale, though admittedly the difference there was that Henry had not fully recovered his will and wits. Though York was dismissed, he was allowed to continue in various roles of government and authority. At one point, York was sent north to deal with Scots rebelling on his behalf as rightful king! His mere presence was enough to end it, as can be imagined.
King Henry spent a large part of those years either sleeping or at prayer and his health was always poor. It fell to Margaret to challenge the threat to her family, and it is from this period that she became known as an arch-manipulator—a charge and historical view that I have always considered harsh. It is true that she took her husband to Kenilworth and had the castle fortified with twenty-six serpentine cannon and a culverin. Those weapons had an extreme (and extremely inaccurate) range of around a mile, but they would have been devastating within four hundred yards, making the castle impregnable at that time. Yet what else could Margaret have done if not fight to protect her husband and her son?
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ESTIMATES OF NUMBERS recruited by Queen Margaret as “Queen’s Gallants” vary. The army at Blore Heath was in the range of six to twelve thousand. Around the same number agreed indentures to fight for King Henry if he were threatened. The only difficulty then was to create the threat. The Bill of Attainder used to force the hand of York and Salisbury was employed for this purpose, an incredibly powerful and rarely used aspect of English law that could end a noble house and remove all protections and titles. Margaret’s council of trusted men included Sir John Fortescue, the most senior judge in England. He would have been vital in the creation of the bill. The mere possibility of such a thing being used was enough to bring York, Salisbury, and Warwick back to the field, as Margaret desired.
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NOTE ON BLORE HEATH: Sometimes described as the true opening of the Wars of the Roses, the Queen’s Gallants were defeated by Salisbury’s better use of tactics and terrain. His scouts spotted Lord Audley’s ambush and he halted and secured his right flank with a laager of carts. Hempmill Brook lay between them and Salisbury staged a false withdrawal to bring the Gallant horsemen forward, then attacked, killing hundreds. Baron Audley led the counterattack, only to be killed in the fighting. It is said three thousand Lancastrian men lost their lives, to around a thousand of Salisbury’s, though to have survived against such a host was no mean feat. Salisbury continued his march south to Ludlow, though he paid a local friar to fire a cannon on the heath all night to confuse potential Lancastrian reinforcements. There is a legend that Queen Margaret observed the battle and no real reason to doubt it, especially as it contains the interesting detail that she had a smith reshoe her horse with the shoes the wrong way round, to confuse any pursuers. The Gallants were her first army, pledged to her, after all. It makes sense that she would have wanted to see them in action against her enemies.
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NOTE ON EDWARD, EARL OF MARCH: In modern times, a height of 6 foot 4 inches is not particularly rare and examples can be found in most gatherings of a hundred people and above. The average modern male height (inexplicably low to my eye) is around 5 foot 8. For the fifteenth century, when the best-guess average height of men was between 5 foot 3 and 5 foot 7, the eighteen–year-old Earl of March would have been a Goliath on the field of war. The equivalent today would be a warrior in iron who stood 6 foot 9 to 10 inches (the height of the author Michael Crichton, by the way) and yet a man who could fight and move with enormous speed and strength. The effect of such a warrior on a hand-to-hand battle can hardly be overestimated.
It is socially interesting to note that diet is a key factor in height. Medieval noblemen ate fish and meat rather more often than commoners. As a group, they would have been taller than most other classes in the country, an advantage of strength and power that would have been increased by constant training from the earliest years.
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EDWARD OF MARCH returned to England from Calais with Warwick in the late summer of 1459, responding to the threat of Attainder and marching quickly to meet up with the forces of York and Salisbury. They would return to complete disaster at Ludlow, with all hopes dashed and all the major players forced to flee. It is true that Captain Andrew Trollope refused to fight against an army apparently led by his king. His desertion with six hundred of the Calais garrison was the turning point of the battle and the cause of York’s downfall. Trollope was later knighted for his service.
After that desertion, the “battle” of Ludford Bridge was practically bloodless. The king’s army had surrounded a much smaller force and barely skirmished with the defenders. York, Salisbury, Warwick, and March made an extraordinary decision to leave. It is perhaps worth pointing out that the idea of slaughtering York’s wife and children would not have seemed likely. York went to Ireland and Salisbury, Warwick, and March escaped back to Calais, arriving in November 1459. By any standards, it was a complete disaster and should have been the end of their cause. It must therefore be some testament to their energy and abilities that it was not.
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WHEN RESEARCHING HISTORICAL FICTION, one of the joys is occasionally coming across scenes that are simply wonderful—and even better when they are not well known. In an action that could have graced any Hornblower story, Warwick stole a royal fleet from Kent, roping ships together and sailing them back to France, in January 1460.
On the second of July, he used that fleet to land an army on the English coast at Sandwich. With his father and Edward of March, they marched seventy miles through Kent, picking up around ten thousand Kentish men as they went. Some of them would certainly have walked that path before, with Jack Cade.
It is a matter of historical record that Lord Scales commanded the royal garrison at the Tower and that both cannon and wildfire were used against the London mob as they rioted. A royal arms depot across the river was raided and cannon were brought to bear on the Tower’s outer wall, smashing it down. It is true that Scales managed to barricade the broken wall and survived long enough to surrender. He was then murdered in custody.
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LEAVING A SMALL FORCE in London under Salisbury, Warwick and March raced north. Their speed paid off as they intercepted King Henry with only five thousand men, before the main royal forces could reinforce the king’s position. The attack was aided by the sudden betrayal of Baron Gray of Ruthin. He changed sides at a vital moment, abandoning King Henry and supporting Warwick and March in exchange for a promise that he would be made Royal Treasurer.
Just eight days and a hundred and fifty miles after landing in Kent, Henry was captured and Margaret forced to run into Wales with her
son, Edward of Lancaster. It was an extraordinary feat of tactics, arms, and endurance. It is true that Warwick and March found Henry alone in his tent.
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IT WAS INTERESTING to include Owen Tudor in this story, mostly because of his more famous descendants. He had married Catherine de Valois, widow of Henry V. His two sons, Jasper and Edmund, would both play their part in the Wars of the Roses—and the Tudor period after it.
It is true that King James II of Scotland died in August 1460, when a cannon exploded during a siege. His son was ten years old and Queen Mary of Guelders would have had to meet and negotiate with Margaret without him, her grief still fresh. Margaret gained her support, perhaps because she was dealing with another foreign queen who had suffered great loss.
The exact number of Scots who returned south is unknown, though it must have been thousands to make it worth doing at all. The agreement was for Prince Edward to marry a princess of Scotland—and for Berwick-upon-Tweed to be handed over as payment. Margaret had her army and a huge force gathered that winter, by the city of York. It is true that the cold months usually made battles impossible. Only the extreme circumstance of Henry being captured could have brought so many to the field as the year ended.
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IN LATE DECEMBER 1460, York and Salisbury found they were vastly outnumbered as they arrived in range of the Lancastrian forces. The best estimates are that they had around eight thousand men, compared to sixteen to eighteen thousand under Somerset, Northumberland, and Clifford. All three of those men had lost their fathers at St. Albans.
York and Salisbury holed up in Sandal Castle to await reinforcements, packing men into the small fortress. The reason they sallied out is not known. Given the small size of Sandal, it might have been because they were running out of food, or because they were drawn out by the sight of a small hostile force and then ambushed. However it happened, they left the castle and were defeated on December 30, 1460. York was killed in the battle. Salisbury was captured and beheaded, and York’s son Edmund was killed by Lord Clifford as he tried to flee the field.