Assassination: The Royal Family's 1000-Year Curse (17 page)

Preparations for war accelerated. Before all was ready, there was yet another conspiracy to kill the King. This plot was led by Richard Earl of Cambridge, the brother of the Duke of York and the father of the child Richard. The replacement king would be Edmund Mortimer 5th Earl of March, brother-in-law of the Earl of Cambridge and uncle of the child Richard. The 5th Earl of March was of course the person entitled to the throne as the senior descendant of the Duke of Clarence; and if he were crowned, then the Earl of Cambridge’s son, the child Richard (four-year-old nephew of the childless Edmund), would be next in line.

Apparently, the 5th Earl of March was not involved in the plot. Its participants were those who had a grievance against the House of Lancaster: the Scots, the Welsh, the nephew of the executed archbishop, the son of Hotspur, and the Lollards.

This time Henry’s escape was even narrower than with the Lollard plot. Having learned of the plan, the 5th Earl of March revealed all to Henry on the very day of the intended assassination. The conspirators were tortured, tried and executed. With the death of the Earl of Cambridge, his son, the child Richard, was now second to his childless uncle the 5th Earl of March in the House of Clarence, and second to his childless uncle the Duke of York in the House of York. It was all coming together.

Ten days later, on 11th August 1415, Henry set sail with his army. Landing in Normandy, they soon took Harfleur. Then, Henry decided to make for the English possession of Calais. They marched over 100 miles, and when they were 30 miles from Calais, Henry’s army was confronted by the army of the King of France,althoughKingCharlesVIhimselfwasfaroff.Theabsence of their king was a distinct advantage for the French as Charles suffered from periods of insanity, and there was always a risk that he might give battle orders during one of his mad spells.

The battleground was a massive field shaped much like an egg-timer, narrowed in the middle by two woods, one enclosing the village of Tramecourt and the other enclosing the village of Agincourt. Henry’s force of knights plus about 900 men-at-arms and 5,000 archers was hugely outnumbered by a French army estimated at anything between 30,000 and 60,000. To limit the enemy’s advantage, Henry determined to meet the French in the narrowest part of the field, where with woods to either side the French would be compressed and unable to extend their line and attack the English from the flanks.

Henry stationed his knights and men-at-arms in the centre, with archers to the left and to the right. Despite their numerical superiority, the French held back. So Henry ordered his men to advance in line to within 300 yards of the enemy. Then they planted stakes in the muddy ground for protection. Next, the English archers, a fighting force without equal in Europe, launched continuous flights of arrows, provoking the French horsemen to attack. They did so, but in the muddy ground it was no charge, rather it was an achievement to move at all. Further hails of arrows cut down the French, and then another wave of French knights and men-at-arms attacked, but they struggled to get past the bodies of the dead and dying men and horses and those who had fallen in the first charge and could not get to their feet.

However, some French knights did manage to advance. One was their commander, Duke John of Alençon, and he edged forward, seeking to kill Henry. Having fought his way through the English ranks until he was alongside the King, Duke John raised his battleaxe, lowered it behind his shoulder and then struck out. He hit Henry with a heavy blow to the head, but Henry was saved from death by the strength of his gemencrusted helmet. Before Duke John could strike again, he was overpowered by Henry’s bodyguard and was then killed by one of Henry’s Welsh knights, Dafydd Gam.

With the French attacks repelled, the English archers dropped their bows and ran at the struggling enemy wielding their axes, swords and knives, slaughtering incessantly. The victory was enormous, the French losing three dukes, 90 counts, 1,500 knights, 5,000 men-at–arms and thousands of lower ranks. Estimates of the English losses range from 13 to 500.

One of those who died was the Duke of York. Obese and heavily armoured, he perished like so many of the French when he was knocked from his horse (reputedly by Duke John of Alençon), could not get to his feet and was trampled to death. It was another step towards the union of the Houses of York and Clarence, for the fallen Duke’s nephew, Richard, was now the Duke of York and second in Clarence after his uncle, Edmund 5th Earl of March.

Returning to a hero’s welcome, Henry started preparations for a further invasion of France. After Caen was taken, Normandy submitted, and then Henry advanced to the gates of Paris. In 1420, by the Treaty of Troyes, Henry got most of what he wanted. He was to be Regent of France for the remainder of mad King Charles VI’s reign, he was appointed Charles’s heir in place of the Dauphin (whose legitimacy his father had already repudiated), and he was given Charles’s daughter, Princess Catherine of Valois (younger sister of Richard II’s widow), in marriage. However, the southern part of France stayed loyal to the Dauphin, and fighting continued, Henry’s further victories being accompanied by grotesque brutality.

Henry is credited with an invention of more lasting significance than his victories. He introduced a document to help his subjects prove who they were and where they came from when they visited foreign lands. Travellers were generally free to disembark at ports, but to travel inland they had to establish their identity and show that they were from a friendly country before being allowed to
pass
through the gate (French:
port
e) in the city walls. So the necessary document was created: the passport.

News now came to Henry of the birth of what would be his only child, another Henry. Soon afterwards, King Henry V fell ill, and in August 1422 at the age of 35, he died. Henry had survived attempts to kill him by English soldiers, French soldiers, family members, nobles and religious fanatics; yet it was only to suffer the death that was most common amongst English soldiers – dysentery (bacterial inflammation of the colon resulting in severe diarrhoea, fever and pain). He narrowly missed out on inheriting the French throne, for Charles VI died just six weeks later.

31 August 1422 – 4 March 1461 4 March 1461 – 3 October 1470 and and
3 October 1470 – 11 April 1471 11 April 1471 – 9 April 1483

When Henry V died in 1422, he left his nine-month-old son Henry as his only child and heir. Henry VI came to the throne without opposition, the son of a victorious English king and a beautiful French princess. Those were his benefits; the disadvantages came from further back: his paternal grandfather although a king was a usurper, and his maternal grandfather although a king was a madman.

Henry was crowned King of England in London in 1429 and King of France in Paris two years later. A regency council ran England for fifteen years, and during that time most of the French possessions were lost to a French army inspired by Joan of Arc. A more material event for the crown had occurred in 1425, when Edmund Mortimer 5th Earl of March died of plague. He left no children, so his 14-year-old nephew Richard was now Duke of York and Earl of March and therefore the heir of the Houses of Clarence and York. At last, the two Houses were one, with Richard taking his name from his father’s House of York and his precedence from his mother’s House of THE PRINCIPAL MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL HOUSES IN THE

Clarence. He knew, and so did many others, that the House of Clarence, not the House of Lancaster, should be providing the king.

In 1437, Henry VI’s mother died and his minority was declared over, although he was still only sixteen years of age. The dowager Queen Catherine had seen little of Henry as he grew up, and she died amidst a scandal when it was discovered that after her husband’s death she had given birth to three boys and two girls in a liaison with Owen Tudor, the clerk of her wardrobe (financial controller); he was the son of Mareddud (Meredith) one of the brothers who came to the aid of Owen Glendower. Owen Tudor and two of his sons, Edmund and Jasper (Henry’s half-brothers), would be Henry VI’s constant supporters.

Although Henry was the king, Richard Duke of York was the wealthiest landowner in England, with inheritances from Mortimer, Clarence and York. He gained important allies when he married Cecily Neville, granddaughter of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford. Cecily was the seventeenth of the twenty-three children of the Earl of Westmorland (the eighth of fourteen with his second wife, Joan Beaufort), and she brought with her the political power of the Neville family, many of Cecily’s brothers and sisters being married to influential members of the nobility. Most significantly, one of her nephews was Richard Neville Earl of Warwick, the man who would become known as the Kingmaker.

Henry VI also married advantageously, to Margaret of Anjou, niece of the wife of King Charles VII of France. Her early ambitions were for the benefit of France rather than England, although in time her remarkable determination would compensate for some of Henry’s weakness.

At first, there was no trouble. The Duke of York was sent to France to command Henry’s army seeking to protect the remaining English possessions. It was in France that Richard and Cecily’s second son, Edward, was born, their first son having died in infancy.

Henry VI may have been the king, but Queen Margaret was already the real power. Much was to the advantage of France as Margaret, having promised the King of France she would do so, persuaded Henry to hand over Maine and Anjou in 1448. Then Normandy was lost, followed by Aquitaine, which had belonged to England for 300 years. Having dealt with the French territories, Margaret’s attention turned to England. Her favourite was Edmund Beaufort Duke of Somerset, who was a grandson of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford. It was as a result of Somerset’s relationship with the Queen that the Duke of York was removed from his command, which was then given to Somerset himself. The two dukes became deadly enemies, and on the Duke of York’s return to England, Somerset saw to it that York was sent to govern Ireland – in Richard’s view it was little better than exile.

With a weak monarch, step by step the country, discontented by the failures in France, lurched towards anarchy. A rebellion started in the south-east, and 20,000 men led by Jack Cade marched to London demanding reform, the dismissal of Somerset and the appointment of the Duke of York as chief councillor. The rebels briefly occupied London, but after some looting they were expelled, and they returned to their homes. Nevertheless, Richard Duke of York had heard the call.

Richard asked Henry time and again for high office, but he was always refused. It was clear to Richard that he would get nowhere without a show of strength, maybe more than a show. Critically, with Henry having no son, Richard Duke of York feared that the Queen would bully her feeble husband into declaring Somerset the heir to the throne. So, in 1452 Richard advanced on London with his forces, claiming that he was only opposed to Somerset, not the King. Henry promised that if Richard disbanded his troops, then Somerset would be arrested and put on trial for his failures in Normandy. Richard agreed and sent his men away. But the Queen forced Henry to break his word, and it was Richard who was treated almost as a traitor and compelled to take a public oath of loyalty. He was allowed to leave London only because of a rumour that his son was approaching the city with an army.