Marguerite of Anjou - A woman scorned...

by Judith Arnopp

I first came across Marguerite while I was at university where I was struck by her unjust legacy. I spent many years researching and writing about Marguerite’s contemporary, Margaret Beaufort, who similarly fought for her son. The similarities only diverge when Margaret Beaufort triumphs and Marguerite’s hopes perish on Tewkesbury field.

Yorkist propaganda against Marguerite of Anjou begins early in her story and continues to affect our perception of her today. Polydore Vergil’s assessment of her character, taken from widespread Yorkist propaganda, echoes loudly in Shakespeare’s malevolent portrayal of the queen in his play ‘The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the Good King Henry the Sixth’

‘She wolf of France but worse than the wolves of France,

whose tongue more poisons than the adder’s tooth!

How ill be-seeming is it in thy sex

To triumph like an Amazonian trull

Upon their woes who Fortune captivates!

But that thy face is vizard like, unchanging,

Made impudent with use of evil deeds,

I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush.

To tell thee whence thy cam’st, of whom derived,

Were shame enough to shame thee, wert not shameless.’ (Act 1.4.112)

Sounds like a nice lady but my research revealed no monster but simply a queen determined to maintain her husband’s throne and to secure the inheritance of her son.  But Marguerite was a foreigner, unhampered by the political restraint placed upon English women and that fact cast the first shadow over her life in England.

Marguerite came from a line of determined women; both her paternal grandmother Yolande of Aragon, and her mother, Isabelle of Lorraine were deeply involved in politics and championed the rights of their absent husbands, raised taxes and armies, administered the duchies and laid down policies. Both women impacted on Marguerite’s own experience after she became Queen of England. To Marguerite, on finding her crown at risk, there was only one thing she could do and that was fight.

During her early years as queen, Marguerite acted as a supporting, conciliatory presence behind the king, mainly confining her activities to matchmaking and obtaining positions at court for friends and servants. She used her influence to secure the surrender of Maine and Anjou and, although the pressure on her to comply is obvious to us now, the act did not endear her to her new subjects.  

Her first real intercession into politics was during the Jack Cade rebellion when at her instigation Henry agreed to show leniency and issue a pardon to the rebels.  The king’s preamble to the pardon illustrates Marguerite’s role in the matter.

‘Nevertheless, recalling to the reflection and consideration of our mind that among those virtues fitting and proper to the royal person and dignity, none befits him more than clemency, which is apt to bring about and put the shame of sinning in the minds of his subject people, and considering as well that it is fitting to show himself such a prince to his subjects as he wishes and desires God to be supreme and high Lord him, persuaded and moved by these and many other pious considerations, among others by the most humble and persistent supplications, prayers and requests of our most serene and beloved wife and consort the queen…we have pardoned…’

The lure of a pardon undermined Cade’s force and mention of Marguerite’s intercession allowed Henry to show leniency without appearing weak. 

It is quite possible that had Henry not fallen ill, Marguerite’s supporting role would have continued but as his condition worsened and the threat from the Yorkist faction grew stronger, she had little option but to assume a more prominent position. The fluctuating health of the king meant that increasingly she governed beneath the cloak of Henry’s kingship, continuing to represent herself as subordinate to the king’s authority whilst, in fact, assuming increasing power.

During a lull in Henry’s illness Marguerite produced the king with an heir Edward, securing Lancaster’s position and dealing a blow to the ambitious Duke of York who was previously Henry’s heir. It is no coincidence that around this time propaganda against the queen increased, and York’s attempts to undermine Margaret’s authority picked up pace.

Some contemporary reports accuse the queen of sexual misconduct and her son, Edward, is described as a ‘changeling,’ a term which infers he was base born.  Two days before York was removed from office on 23 February 1456 a John Helton was executed for distributing bills that alleged the prince was not the queen’s son.  

As the enmity between York and Lancaster increased, the battle for power descended into military combat obliging Marguerite to step further and further from the expected feminine role. The nobles of England and their adherents were killed in skirmishes and battles, the reins of government passing from York to Henry (or Marguerite)  but it was not until the Battle of Towton that the reign of Lancaster was all but ended and the new Yorkist dynasty arose.

York was dead and Edward IV was firmly on the throne, Marguerite could have faded into gentile retirement. The House of York’s vendetta against the deposed queen could have ceased. But poetry and pamphlets continued to be issued, denigrating both Marguerite and her claim to the throne. She was blamed for the fall of the Lancastrian dynasty and stereotyped as ‘an angry woman driven by malice, spreading sorrow, disorder and confusion in her wake.’  

Marguerite, still refusing to admit defeat, spent the next ten years in exile, plotting to reinstate her son Edward. Her determination strong enough that when Warwick fell out with Edward IV, she formed an alliance with her great enemy and consented to a marriage between her son and Warwick’s youngest daughter, Anne.  

It was a short lived alliance that ended for Warwick at Barnet, and for Marguerite at Tewkesbury where her seventeen year old son was killed, along with her ambition for the English throne.

But Yorkist propaganda continued, using a wide range of devices to defame Marguerite, making it difficult, even now, to obtain a clear view of her. Early historians picked up the Yorkist banner and continued to dehumanise her, subverting her female instinct to nurture into an unnatural lust for murder.

               By the time Shakespeare wrote his Wars of the Roses plays Marguerite’s had already come to epitomise unrelieved lust for power possessing a ‘tigers heart wrapped in a woman’s hide.’   Her strength is undermined by her female flaws and she ‘lacks the true qualities of royalty...the queen’s character is also tainted by immorality: she is an adulteress. But it is power rather than lust which dominates her character, and vengefulness which becomes its most terrible flaw.’  

In Henry VI part III her feminine weaknesses are replaced by the most ignoble of male attributes; she is masculine but akin to the worst of men. Shakespeare’s Marguerite is an arch-villainess whose femininity is inverted to encompass the direst human traits; her assumption of a male role and her lust for blood and revenge reverses the natural order and creates chaos in the realm. 

In the hands of the bard, Marguerite is a marvellous authorial depiction of twisted humanity and as a playwright Shakespeare remains unchallenged but a historian he was not.  Unfortunately, Shakespeare’s history plays came to be utilised not as examples of literary genius but as factual documents of history.

In the 1840’s Agnes Strickland published her Lives of the Queens of England and viewed Marguerite’s story ‘...of more powerful of interest than are to be found in the imaginary career of any heroine of romance; for the creations of fiction, however forcibly they may appeal to our imagination, fade into insignificance before the simple majesty of truth.’

Like other Victorian moralists, Strickland provides a highly romanticised picture of an unfortunate queen who unwisely meddled in the concerns of men. Marguerite becomes pitiful in her defeat but Strickland, by illustrating her utter personal defeat and regret, upholds the medieval opinion of a woman’s proper place.

‘There is something touching in the very simplicity of the Latin sentence with which the deed begins, that was wrung from the broken-hearted heroine who had, through so many storms of adversity, defended the rights of her royal consort and son.  While they remained in life, she would have died a thousand deaths rather than relinquish even the most shadowy of their claims; but the dear ones were no more,

‘Ambition, pride, the rival names

of York and Lancaster,

with all their long contested claims

what were they then to her?

Passively and almost with indifference, Margaret subscribed the instrument commencing ‘Ego, Margarita dum in regno Anglia maritata etc. I, Margaret, formerly in England married, renounce all that I could pretend to in England by the conditions of my marriage, with all other things there, to Edward, now king of England.’

J. J. Bagley in his biography of Marguerite written in 1948 provides a less romantic presentation. Bagley admits that Marguerite ‘did not cause the Wars of the Roses, but her intense, bitter feeling, her refusal to compromise, and her disregard of any other factor than the inheritance of her only son were reflected in the brutal, callous nature of the prolonged struggle.  For the sake of its own cause and for the welfare of the English people, the house of Lancaster might have wished for a wiser and more understanding leader, but nowhere could it have found a braver and more determined champion. Queen Margaret’s life was more than a sad story. It was a true tragedy, for the root cause of her failure lay, not in the fickle fate of battles, but in her own character and philosophy.’

In Bagley’s opinion, the Lancastrian cause could not have wished for a braver leader but perhaps one less swayed by dangerous female characteristics such as loyalty to her son and a determination to maintain a hold on his birthright.  

Richard, Duke of York was equally ambitious for his sons and fought just as fiercely for what he saw as his own rights and, moreover, he fought against an anointed king. 

Marguerite was trying to defend the throne of England against attack, as was her duty.

Historical research in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has focused on the study of women and how women have exercised power; gendered analysis has allowed historians to move away from the traditional perception of queens.  Modern scholars look at the restrictions placed upon them and how those limitations impinged upon their political lives.  Marguerite pushed the boundaries of her engendered position; faced with the insurmountable problem of an inefficient consort she was forced to take unpopular actions and has since been judged accordingly. 

Other people have campaigned for thrones, overthrown kings and taken power from weak or incompetent rulers and (with the exception of Richard III) have not been recorded historically as unnatural monsters; the only difference is that they were men. 

Marguerite posed a threat to male rule that the medieval world was unprepared to accept.   A woman out of her prescribed place was deemed ‘unnatural’ and any divergence from the norm considered suspect and therefore dangerous.  Rosaldo clarifies the point in his book Women, Culture and Society,

‘Societies that define woman as lacking legitimate authority have no way of acknowledging the reality of female power.  This difference between rule and reality is reflected in our own society when we speak of powerful women as ‘bitches.’’

Marguerite’s determination and indefatigable resolve to win back her son’s throne was only exhausted by his death. In a man such tenacity would be heroic.  She has been labelled a violent and vengeful woman but surely she was no more so than her male opponents.  The unique circumstances in which she found herself made it impossible to follow prescribed gender boundaries while her opponents remained unfettered.  

Hostile propaganda, perpetuated by male playwrights and Victorian moralists, remains in our consciousness today.  Every day on social media I hear derogatory comments against Marguerite and her contemporary, Margaret Beaufort, but medieval history cannot be judged from a modern perspective and it does nobody any favours to perpetuate the misogyny of the past. 

As was my intention in The Beaufort Chronicle which traces the life of Margaret Beaufort, my novel, Marguerite: Hell Hath No Fury is my own poor attempt to rectify the flawed perception of a brave woman. 

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Judith Arnopp – Author Biography

A lifelong history enthusiast and avid reader, Judith holds a BA in English/Creative writing and a Masters in Medieval Studies. She lives on the coast of West Wales where she writes both fiction and non-fiction. She is best known for her novels set in the Medieval and Tudor period, focussing on the perspective of historical women but recently she has written a trilogy from the perspective of Henry VIII himself.

 Judith is also a founder member of a re-enactment group called The Fyne Companye of Cambria which is when and why she began to experiment with sewing historical garments. She now makes clothes and accessories both for the group and others. She is not a professionally trained sewer but through trial, error and determination has learned how to make authentic looking, if not strictly historically accurate clothing. A non-fiction book about Tudor clothing, How to Dress like a Tudor, was published in 2023 by Pen and Sword.

 She runs a small seaside holiday let in Aberporth and when she has time for fun, likes to garden and restore antique doll’s houses. You can find her on most social media platforms.

 Her novels include:

A Song of Sixpence: the story of Elizabeth of York

The Beaufort Chronicle: the life of Lady Margaret Beaufort (three book series)

The Henrician Chronicle: comprising of:

A Matter of Conscience: Henry VIII, the Aragon Years (Book One of The Henrician Chronicle)

A Matter of Faith: Henry VIII, the Days of the Phoenix (Book Two of The Henrician Chronicle)

A Matter of Time: Henry VIII, the Dying of the Light (Book Three of The Henrician Chronicle)

The Kiss of the Concubine: a story of Anne Boleyn

The Winchester Goose: at the court of Henry VIII

Intractable Heart: the story of Katheryn Parr

Sisters of Arden: on the Pilgrimage of Grace

The Heretic Wind: the life of Mary Tudor, Queen of England

Peaceweaver

The Forest Dwellers

The Song of Heledd

The Book of Thornhold

A Daughter of Warwick: the story of Anne Neville, Queen of Richard III

Marguerite: Hell Hath No Fury! 

Webpage: http://www.judithmarnopp.com

Amazon Author Page: author.to/juditharnoppbooks

Blog: www.juditharnoppnovelist.blogspot.co.uk/

Social media links

https://www.facebook.com/thetudorworldofjuditharnopp

https://x.com/JudithArnopp

https://www.threads.net/@tudor_juditharnopp 

Illustrations via WikimediaCommons

Fig 1 - John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, presents the Book of Romances to Margaret of Anjou, Queen to Henry VI 

Fig 2 - Portrait of Marguerite of Anjou (1430 -1482) Queen Consort of England

Fig 3 - John Gilbert - Margaret of Anjou taken prisoner after the battle of Tewkesbury (1875)

Fig 4 - Richard Burchett (1815-1875) - Sanctuary (Edward IV and Lancastrian Fugitives at Tewkesbury Abbey) - 600 - Guildhall Art Gallery

Henry VI: Part Two

by Derek Birks

Henry VI

At the end of my first post about Henry VI (click here for Part One), I posed the question: would Henry VI learn from his mistakes? 

I think you might already suspect the answer but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he does after 1450.

King's College, Cambridge: Endowed by Henry VI

After the failure of Cade’s rebellion in 1450, Henry was given another chance to get it right. Up to 1450 his rule was characterised by the three Ps: prayer, piety and peace which underpinned not only his spiritual life but also his kingship. There is nothing wrong with the three Ps at all, except that a successful king had to consider other aspects of life too. Most medieval kings thought prayer and piety very important, but they also knew they must understand what their subjects – especially their leading subjects – wanted from them.

I don’t believe Henry was a fool but I do think he was an idealist. In fact, the influence of his ideals on his policies meant that at times of crisis he sometimes made the wrong call. I see this as perhaps the most important failure of his disastrous reign.

What factors dominated politics after 1450?

By 1450 Henry had been married to Margaret of Anjou for five years without producing an heir to the throne. A male heir is what every king needed. Though it has been suggested that Henry’s apparent awkwardness with the naked body made his marital relations difficult, it seems to me that Henry took his royal duties seriously enough.

Of course, if Henry did not have a child then the crown would most likely pass to Richard, Duke of York. When, in the troubled summer of 1450, most of Henry’s inner circle of advisers were killed, rebel manifestos already argued that the Duke of York should play a greater role in advising the king. Yet York had been recalled from France in 1447 and sent to Ireland where he was very far indeed from the political epicentre.

Clearly Henry mistrusted or feared the Duke of York but, up to 1447, York appears to have been a loyal crown servant. Supplanting York as a commander in France was Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset – a man with modest qualifications as a military leader. After the rebellion in 1450, Somerset was brought home and became a close royal confidant.

Beaufort was not just any old peer. His family, like those of the king and York, was descended from Edward III. He was closer in blood to Henry than York was, though barred from the succession by letters patent of Henry IV. We do not know whether Henry wanted to restore the Beaufort line to the succession, but he must have considered the possibility and York saw Somerset as a clear rival. No, not just a rival; he was the enemy, for he was receiving the very rewards that York believed his status warranted, whilst York had acquired only debts from his government service.

How did the Rivalry between York and Somerset cause Henry problems?

Henry probably thought it best to leave York in Ireland – out of sight, if not entirely out of mind – but I fear he should have paid attention to the maxim: ‘Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.’

As I’ve pointed out in a previous post, Richard, Duke of York, took his position in the state very seriously indeed and whilst he remained loyal to the king, he did not wish to see his status eroded by the presence of Edmund Beaufort at court. He must have been spitting blood in Ireland, looking on during Cade’s rebellion as Henry’s government floundered.

So, in September 1450 York returned to England without Henry’s permission and arrived at Westminster with a large retinue. He had come, he said, to proclaim his loyalty and offer himself publicly as the man to lead the king’s government and remove corruption. This was a popular, if rather elusive - and illusory - aim. York waged a propaganda war against Somerset, posing as the champion of justice. He called in favours from his many clients, raising their hopes of gaining advancement in a ‘new order’ with York at the helm. His influence in parliament was especially strong but sadly parliaments were called only at the bidding of the king.

How did Henry respond to York’s Challenge?

Henry, not unreasonably I would suggest, issued a response which declined York’s kind offer and emphasised that he preferred the collective advice of a council to that of one man.

Whilst this sounds laudable enough, it did not stop Somerset’s rise and his appointment in 1451 as Captain of Calais gave him access to a powerful military garrison. Yet, at the same time, the war with France went from bad to worse and soon Gascony was lost.

By February 1452, York had had enough. Action was required and he launched another propaganda campaign to muster support. A surviving letter from the Duke of York to the folk of Shrewsbury shows us clearly his attitude to both the king and Somerset. He cited the: “envy, malice and untruth of the Duke of Somerset” and stressed: “it not being my intent to displease my sovereign lord, but seeing that the said duke ever prevaileth and ruleth about the king’s person and that by this means the land is likely to be destroyed, I am fully determined to proceed in all haste against him with the help of my kinsmen and friends.”

However you dress it up, York was talking rebellion. He raised an army and camped at Dartford. The king also raised an army and camped at Blackheath. This is 1452 remember – before the first battle at St Albans in 1455 which is often regarded as the start of the Wars of the Roses. Two armed camps then, with cannons and so on, but no battle. Why not? Well mainly because York’s support amongst those who mattered – i.e. lords – was minimal. Those we know as the great Yorkist supporters of a few years later, the earls of Salisbury and Warwick, were firmly in the king’s camp. Besides, no-one really had the stomach for a fight. The councillors talked York out of it in the end and, on a promise that Somerset would be arrested and put on trial, York capitulated. However, having disbanded his army, he found that Somerset was neither arrested nor tried.

Whether by luck, good judgement or the diplomacy of the Neville lords, Henry had averted rebellion. Yet, had the Duke of York not committed open treason and escaped unpunished?

Herein lay a critical failure of Henry VI: he did not have a ruthless bone in his body. York walked free having brought the kingdom to the brink of chaos. Was this because Henry was a simpleton? No. Was it because he was in the thrall of Somerset? Hardly! It was the three Ps again. Henry wanted peace between his warring factions. A more ruthless man, a more pragmatic king, would have realised that York had overstepped too far and had to go. One could say it was admirable on Henry’s part, but it was a genuine political risk to leave such a powerful man at large. For the time being York went away to lick his wounds, whilst Somerset found ways of punishing his followers if not the man himself.

If York was humiliated and rebellion averted, what went wrong?

Margaret of Anjou from the Talbot Shrewsbury Book

In the latter part of 1452, things were actually looking up for Henry with victories in France and then in the spring of 1453 came the news that Queen Margaret was finally pregnant. It seemed Henry’s fortunes had turned, but it was not to be. In July the English army in France was annihilated at Castillon and its heroic general, the Earl of Shrewsbury, killed.

Shortly after this catastrophe, the king himself suffered a breakdown. Perhaps it was prompted by news of the defeat, or perhaps by the reality of his wife’s pregnancy, but in truth we’ll never know. It may just have been lying in wait in his genes ready to pop out and cause maximum disaster – well it certainly did that!

Henry was incapable of movement, let alone thought. In a personal monarchy this meant there was a vacuum at the centre of power. Nothing important could be done without the king’s approval, so effectively nothing important could be done… For two months the king’s condition was kept secret but that could not go on forever. It’s ironic in a way that despite all the frequent criticisms of Henry’s weakness or folly, it is his absence that propels the government of England into the abyss.

In mid-October 1453 the queen gave birth to a son, the heir Henry so desperately needed. But later in October the King’s Council met to discuss what to do about Henry’s condition. Somerset clearly intended to rule as some sort of regent, hoping that the council would be swayed in his favour by York’s previous misdemeanours. If York was allowed to return to the council, there would not be room for both of them.

In 1452 York was isolated but in the year since then, far away from the royal court, something very important had happened: York had found some powerful friends.

This new development will be the focus of my next post in this series, which will focus on Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.

Previous posts in the series, see The Magnificent Seven...in the War of the Roses, and Henry VI: Part One.

Media:
Henry VI: By Unknown - National Portrait Gallery: NPG 2457 [Public Domain]
King's College Chapel, Cambridge: By Dmitry Tonkonog (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Margaret of Anjou: By Talbot Master (fl. in Rouen, c. 1430–60) - Cropped image of File:Presentation of the Book of Romances.jpg, a scan of the manuscript illuminated by the Talbot Master (British Library, Royal 15 E VI, f. 2v), Public Domain

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Derek Birks was born in Hampshire in England but spent his teenage years in Auckland, New Zealand, where he still has strong family ties. For many years he taught history in a secondary school but took early retirement to concentrate on writing. Apart from his writing, he spends his time gardening, travelling, walking and taking part in archaeological digs at a Roman villa.

Derek is interested in a wide range of historical themes but his particular favourite is the late medieval period. He writes action-packed fiction which is rooted in accurate history. His debut historical novel, Feud, is set in the period of the Wars of the Roses and is the first of a series entitled Rebels & Brothers which follows the fortunes of the fictional Elder family. The fourth and final book of the series, The Last Shroud, was published in the summer of 2015.

The Elders will return in Scars from the Past, the first of a new series, in November 2016.

Connect with Derek through his Website, Blog, and Twitter (@Feud_writer). The Rebels & Brothers series is available on Amazon UK and Amazon.com. 

Unearthing the Secrets of the Battle of Towton

by Catherine Hokin

“That day there was a very great conflict, which began with the rising of the sun and lasted until the tenth hour of the night, so great was the pertinacity and boldness of the men, who never heeded the possibility of a miserable death”.

So George Neville, Archbishop of York and brother to Richard Neville ‘The Kingmaker’, described the Battle of Towton in letters written in its immediate aftermath to the papal legate Coppini. Or, to use the description from The Economist, this was a battle that was “nasty, brutish and not that short.”

The Battle of Towton, fought on a snowy Palm Sunday in March 1461, has been described as the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil. While the outcome of the battle is well-known – the defeat and chase into exile of the Lancastrian King Henry VI by the soon to be King Edward IV of the House of York – some of the details of the battle itself remain in dispute, in particular the numbers involved. Estimates vary from a probably exaggerated 100,000 soldiers and 40,000 deaths (twice the number killed by machine gun fire on the first day of the Somme to give some context) to a more probable 60,000 soldiers and upwards of 25,000 deaths, one thing is inescapable: this was a battle and a slaughter on an unprecedented scale.

One of the reasons for this was a change to the way war was customarily fought on English soil: Edward, in all probability seeking revenge for the slaughter of his father at the Battle of Wakefield, issued the unprecedented command that no prisoners should be taken or enemies saved.

How can we substantiate this? One of the fascinating things about Towton is that, although contemporary accounts are few, the battle has left modern scholars huge clues through the scale of the archaeological finds unearthed around the battle site.

We know, for example, that some of the earliest handguns found in England were fired during this battle. The gun fragments found had a barrel diameter of around 2cm and gunpowder tracings were found inside, a lead bullet with an iron core was also discovered. Although the availability of a gun at a time when arrows and hand-to-hand weaponry were the norm might sound like it would confer easy victory on the holders, the opposite was unfortunately more likely - early guns had the nasty habit of blowing up on firing so were of little real use.

In addition to the guns, Towton has given up its secrets in the form of mass graves which have enabled archaeologists to determine far more about the causes of death among soldiers than it is suitable to detail here. In 1996, 40 bodies were recovered from a grave at Towton Hall – their ages ranged from 17 to 50, many had been clenching their teeth so tight that parts had splintered off and all of them had in excess of 20 head injuries. Investigations into the skeletons are continuing and there are a number of excellent accounts – I would recommend the Economist article cited earlier as a starting point. What has already been deduced is the sheer ferocity of the ten long hours of that battle – whether these were routed Lancastrians being chased and mown down on Edward’s orders or men who had fallen in the fighting itself, these men had died horrific deaths at the hands of their fellow-countrymen. A sobering thought.

The Battle of Towton has an undeniable fascination and a resonance that carries it across 500 years of history and different disciplines – Professor P.J.C Field has done studies, for example, that link Sir Thomas Malory’s description of King Arthur’s last battle in Morte d’Arthur to Towton. As the battlefield continues to shed its secrets and our view into the past widens, its story can only grow.

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Blood and Roses – a novel of Margaret of Anjou and her pivotal role in the Wars of the Roses by Catherine Hokin.

1460

The English Crown – a bloodied, restless prize.

The one contender strong enough to hold it? A woman. Margaret of Anjou: a French Queen in a hostile country, born to rule but refused the right, shackled to a King lost in a shadow-land.

When a craving for power becomes a crusade, when two rival dynasties rip the country apart in their desire to rule it and thrones are the spoils of a battlefield, the stakes can only rise. And if the highest stake you have is your son?

You play it.

Catherine is a Glasgow-based author with a degree in History from Manchester University. After years of talking about it, she finally started writing seriously about 3 years ago, researching and writing her debut novel, Blood and Roses, which will be published in January 2016 by Yolk Publishing. The novel tells the story of Margaret of Anjou and her pivotal role in the Wars of the Roses, exploring the relationship between Margaret and her son and her part in shaping the course of the bloody political rivalry of the fifteenth century. About a year ago, Catherine also started writing short stories - she was recently 3rd prize winner in the 2015 West Sussex Writers Short Story Competition and a finalist in the Scottish Arts Club 2015 Short Story Competition. She regularly blogs as Heroine Chic, casting a historical, and often hysterical, eye over women in history, popular culture and life in general.

Social media links:

https://www.catherinehokin.com/

http://catherinehokin.blogspot.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/cathokin/

Twitter @cathokin

Richard III v Henry VII Naughty or Nice?

I have always been intrigued by the mystery of the Princes in the Tower. Most people are aware that, on the sudden death of their father Edward IV, the two boys were ensconced in the Tower, as was tradition, to await the coronation of the eldest boy as Edward V. But, although preparations for his coronation were underway, it was suddenly claimed that Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been bigamous and, therefore, all their children illegitimate.

Since illegitimacy barred the young Edward from the throne, his uncle, Richard III, was, by a statute known as the Titulus Regius, proclaimed as the rightful king and crowned in his stead.

After his coronation in 1483 accounts of the boys’ whereabouts begin to dwindle from the historical record and many believe they never left the Tower alive but were murdered there; suffocated in their sleep with a pillow.

Richard reigned until August 1485 when Henry Tudor landed at Milford Haven to claim the throne for himself. After the Battle of Bosworth, Henry Tudor (and his subsequent heirs) did their best to damage Richard’s reputation and since that date it has been widely believed that Richard III was responsible for the boys’ deaths. Thomas More was the first to blacken his name and William Shakespeare, also writing for a Tudor monarch, twisted Richard’s character further. Consequently many later histories are based on a literary play rather on historical record. Most historians now agree that many of the heinous crimes attributed to Richard were, in fact, committed by others.

Tudor propaganda ensured that the surviving accounts of the years surrounding Bosworth are murky to say the least. Early in his reign Henry Tudor ordered all copies of the Titular Regius to be ‘utterly destroyed’ for reasons which may, or may not, appear obvious. You have to dig deep to find unbiased accounts but they do exist and there are several other candidates that fit the ‘murderer’ tag just as well as Richard.

Richard was crowned king in 1483 and would have been aware that his nephews provided a potential target for those wishing to supplant him. A prudent king would have removed them from the picture. Richard was by all accounts a religious man and killing his nephews would have been sinful, even in those days. It would also be disloyal to his brother to whom Richard had been devoted in life. The act would also be a Godsend to any enemy that wished to turn the kingdom against him and, therefore, foolish. Chronicles prove that Richard was neither imprudent, sinful or foolish. So why, when rumours of the death began circulating, did he not just produce the boys? A lot has been read into this and it does seem to suggest that he could not produce them but that doesn’t necessarily mean they were already dead, they could have been sent out of harm’s way.

Many believe Richard ordered that the boys be removed to safety but there are now so many conflicting accounts and theories as to where they may have been moved to, that it is difficult to sift the good from the bad. During Richard’s reign there was a royal nursery at his castle at Sheriff Hutton where his brother George of Clarence’s children, Margaret, and Edward of Warwick, resided, along with Richard’s legitimate son, also named Edward, and his two illegitimate children, John and Catherine. On Henry’s accession to the throne one of his first acts was to secure the persons of the children therein.

IF the boys were found there then, when you consider Henry’s treatment of other surviving Yorkists, then their fate seems sealed. Richard’s legitimate son, Edward died of natural causes during his father’s reign but the other children were still living at the time of Bosworth. Richard’s illegitimate daughter, Catherine, was no longer surviving as early as Elizabeth of York’s coronation in 1487 and her brother John’s fate is less clear but records show that a ‘base sone’ of Richard’s was executed by Henry in 1491. Clarence’s children were also both executed by Tudor monarchs, Warwick was immediately incarcerated in the tower where he remained until accused of plotting with Perkin Warbeck. He was executed in 1499, an act made worse by the fact that the boy appears to have suffered from learning difficulties. His sister Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, managed to survive Henry VII’s rule but under Henry VIII, at the age of approximately sixty-eight, she was executed. But I digress. I will leave that story for another day.

True or not, I like the idea that the princes escaped, not least because of the wonderful array of ‘survival’ theories that it has provoked. Such imaginings are a real gift to historical novelists whichever way they care to play it.

Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne was tenuous to say the least, based upon his descent from Edward III, but through his mother's illegitimate Beaufort line. His title was Lancastrian and the House of Lancaster had long been regarded as usurpers and the direct line extinguished. He could never have won the victory nor ascended to the throne as heir of the House of Lancaster if his promise to marry Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV, had not won him the support of a few disaffected Yorkists.

It was imperative that Elizabeth’s illegitimacy was reversed in order to bolster Henry’s position but in legitimising her, Henry also legitimised her brothers, thus placing them before himself in the line of succession. So, IF the boys were still living at this time, they would have been much more of an obstruction to Henry than they ever were to Richard, who already legitimately held the position of king. This, in my view, provides a motive.

Of course, it’s a big IF. In my opinion, a study of the characters of Richard and Henry, make the latter more likely to resort to infanticide. Not that he would have wielded the axe himself, or in this particular case, the pillow.

Far from being the personification of evil as depicted by Shakespeare, Richard did have some qualities that Henry lacked. While Richard, having fought on numerous battlefields since his teens, was an undisputed warrior, Henry was not. At Bosworth he waited on the sidelines and let others do his dirty work for him. While Richard’s life is, with the exception of the puzzling execution of William Hastings, full of loyalty and honour, Henry’s is not. If Richard had wanted the boys killed he would probably have done the deed openly, or wielded the ‘pillow’ himself. Underhanded infanticide does not seem to have been his style.

Henry’s character was far more secretive and underhand. Henry never felt secure on his stolen throne and his court is famous for its intrigue and spies and I believe his reign suffered more uprisings than any other. People just didn’t like Henry and it’s easy to see why.

The first vengeance that Henry Tudor took as monarch was upon the body of the late King. After the battle, in an unprecedented act, the body of Richard III, an anointed king, was slung naked over a horse, arms and legs dangling, a halter was tossed around his neck in symbolism of his defeat. In this indignity, he was taken to the Franciscan Priory church of the Greyfriars at Leicester where, for two days, his body was exhibited for all to see. He was buried at the friary with no ceremony. The church does not exist today – like so many others, when Henry's son ordered the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530’s, the building was destroyed and, rumour has it, Richard's grave was opened and the remains thrown out.

Henry’s next act as King was to date his reign from the day before Bosworth thus rendering as traitors all those who had loyally fought for King Richard, so that they could then be attainted for treason.

England lost much of its nobility during the battle, including men of great wealth like John Howard, the Duke of Norfolk. Henry appropriated their lands and kept the revenue for the crown. Some he executed for treason, among them William Bracher, Sir John Buck of Harthill and William Catesby of Ashby St Legers. Some, like Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, he imprisoned in the tower.

Those of Richard’s supporters that did survive the battle were attainted and their estates confiscated; this effectively disarmed them and kept them from raising arms against the king. Henry then forbid all nobles to retain their own armies to prevent them from being more powerful than himself and also to deter them from rebelling against him. It was an effective policy and, although Henry did not manage to subdue all opposition, it is a fact that the English nobility, already in decline during the Wars of the Roses, fell rapidly from influence under the Tudors. By the reign of Queen Elizabeth I England had just one remaining duke, that of Norfolk, and, after plotting to marry Mary Queen of Scots and restore Catholicism to England, he too was executed for treason in 1572.

It was not just the nobility that Henry targeted, indeed they seem to have been lower down on his list than those descended directly from the bloodline of Plantagenet. During the next three reigns the heirs of York were systematically wiped out.

I have tried to be objective in this brief overview but I guess I have failed. I cannot help it. Every time I consider this argument it seems to me that Richard was the guy with the nobler tendencies. While Henry spent his youth skulking around Europe, living off others, emptying gaols in order to come and steal a crown to which he had no right, Richard was aiding his brother, King Edward and proving almost unbelievably loyal despite disagreeing with his policies. In the short years that Richard was king he showed promise of becoming a just ruler, championing the rights of the poor against the rich (imagine that) and inspiring the loyalty in his subjects in the north, who knew him well. He may have been a violent man by our standards but he lived in violent times. Killing on the battlefield was honourable, off the field it was not. He abhorred disloyalty, as is made apparent by his reaction to Hastings’ betrayal, and, given the chance, I believe he would have made a better king than Henry who exploited rich and poor alike to bolster his own bulging coffers.

Throughout his life Henry resorted to devious methods. He lied and cheated his way to the throne and even once he had won it, his insecurities continued to dog him and his unscrupulous practices continued.

The Tudor regime may have put an end to the tumultuous years of the Wars of the Roses but the dying didn’t stop. In Henry VIII’s reign alone it has been estimated that 72,000 people were executed. In 1485 the honourable ferocity of the Plantagenets was replaced by the deceit of the Tudors who, although they brought security and wealth to Britain, did so dishonourably.

You can probably tell which banner I fight under but the subject is just as fascinating from the other side. The years surrounding The Battle of Bosworth have got to be the most intriguing in British History. If my rather biased view of the issues have inspired you to read more, there are countless books on the subject and you will find that historians just cannot remain impartial. There is something about the Wars of the Roses that, even today, forces you to take sides.

You can read more about the Vengeance of the Tudors on my webpage: http://www.juditharnopp.com/vengeanceofthetudors.htm

Pictures: White rose of York, Red Rose of Lancaster.

Right hand picture: Richard III

Left hand Picture: Henry VII