The Last White Rose (25 page)

4
.
LP Hen VII
, vol. I,
op. cit
., p. 266.

5
.
Ibid
., pp. 137–8.

6
. J.G. Nichols (ed.),
Chronicle of the
Grey Friars of London
, Camden Society, Old Series 53, London, 1852, p. 127.

7
.
Chronicles of London
,
op. cit
., p. 55.

8
. Vergil,
op. cit
., p. 125.

9
.
Chronicles of London
,
op. cit
., p. 256.

10
. Vergil,
op. cit
., p. 126.

11
. LP Hen VII
,
op. cit
., vol. I, p. 180.

12
.
Ibid
., p. 184.

13
. A. Hanham, ‘Edmund de la Pole, defector’, in
Journal of the
Society for
Renaissance Studies
, 2 (1988), p. 244.

14
.
LP Hen VII
,
op. cit
., vol. I, pp. 134–51.

15
. Ibid
., pp. 205–6.

16
. W. Busch,
England under the Tudors
, vol. I, p. 179.

17
. Hall,
op. cit
., p. 496.

18
. Vergil,
op. cit
., p. 122.

19
. Bacon,
op. cit
., p. 180.

20
.
LP Hen VII
,
op. cit
., vol. I, p. 228.

21
.
Ibid.
, p. 188.

22
.
Ibid.
, p. 220–5.

23
.
CSP Ven, op. cit
., vol. I, 849 and 851.

24
.
LP Hen VII
,
op. cit
., vol. I, p. 254.

25
.
Ibid.
, p. 276.

26
.
CSP Ven
,
op. cit
., vol. I, 861.

15

September 1504: A Conversation about the Future

‘But none of them, he said, spake of my lord prince.’

John Flamank’s report to Henry VII
¹

Some experts on the Tudor period regard Edmund de la Pole as a mere footnote to the history of the reign, a figure without any real political significance – which is precisely how Henry VII wanted his subjects to see the earl. Yet however wretched Edmund’s adventures in Germany and the Low Countries may have been, they showed that more than a few foreign rulers accepted him as a serious claimant to the English throne. And Henry knew that a fair number of Englishmen recognized Suffolk’s claims, judging from a spy’s report from Calais that reached him during the autumn of 1504. It showed that some of his most trusted subjects thought the White Rose might become their next ruler.

Although taking just a few hours if the English Channel’s uncertain weather was kind and the tides had been properly reckoned, a crossing from Dover to Calais in the early sixteenth century, on the whole, was a thing to be dreaded. All too often it could turn into a long and frightening voyage. The clumsy little ships – tubby, clinker-built ‘cogs’ – might easily be driven off course for days on end, tacking to and fro against a contrary wind, their skippers fearful of hoisting too much sail in case a squall blew up. In a high sea, vessels like this rolled and pitched horribly, shipping an alarming amount of water, the waves drenching everybody on board and swamping the rudimentary cabins under the ‘castles’ fore and aft. Passengers and crew were profoundly thankful to make land.

Going ashore at Calais, they found themselves on English soil in a thriving English town that housed the English merchants of the Staple, a tightly knit, and to some extent intermarried, community, who controlled the export of their country’s wool, selling the bulk of it in Flanders where textile production was booming. In consequence, Calais – ‘Calis’ as it was pronounced at the time – was the entry point through which most of the foreign gold and silver earned by trade went back to England, so that its streets were full of luxury shops and expensive taverns selling best quality wine. Its merchants lived in fine, richly furnished mansions with glass windows and tall chimneys. The town was a jewel in the English Crown and Henry VII found time to visit it twice – the second occasion being in 1500 when he was paid a state visit here by Archduke Philip, who was also Duke of Burgundy.

Yet there was something claustrophobic about life at Calais. Its inhabitants felt dangerously isolated, cut off from home by rough seas and in constant fear of a siege as, understandably, the town’s occupation by the English was resented by the French. But its massive fortifications looked impregnable (even though outdated), while the land around it, known as the Marches of Calais, was defended by two particularly strong castles – Hammes
and Guisnes. A widespread network of secret agents, reaching as far away as Paris, was always on the look out for any sign of hostile preparations by the French government so as to give the garrison good warning of an attack.

For Henry VII, however, ‘Calais and the Marches of Calais’ were more than just a strategic and commercial bridgehead across the Channel. The garrison was the nearest thing he possessed to a standing army. In England he merely had a bodyguard of 200 ‘yeomen’, but over in Calais he maintained a regular force of 700–800 regularly paid men-at-arms, archers and gunners. If necessary, Guisnes and Hammes could be used as maximum security gaols for state prisoners.

However, for many years Yorkist support was embedded in Calais. Although many hardliners had been hunted down and eliminated or chased away, devotion to the old royal family remained entrenched among some of the merchant families and even among the troops. The king took exceptional care when choosing the garrison’s officers. These consisted of lieutenant and deputy lieutenant, governor and deputy governor, treasurer, captain and gentleman porter, posts that were only given to trusted courtiers whom he knew well. If he could not depend on them, then he could depend on no one. Needless to say, Henry relied on spies to make absolutely certain of his officers’ loyalty. One of these agents was a certain John Flamank, the deputy governor’s son-in-law. (He was also the brother of Thomas Flamank, the lawyer who had been executed for his part in the Cornish rebellion of 1497.)

A secret report by Flamank, written in 1504, must have made uncomfortable reading for the king. It provides a rare insight into just how worried many Englishmen of standing were about the succession to the throne, even those who were most loyal to the king. It also reveals that a substantial proportion of Henry VII’s subjects heartily disliked their ruler. Even now the Tudor dynasty had not yet been securely established and some important people were taking Edmund de la Pole very seriously indeed.

The report concerns a meeting held at Calais. In attendance was the treasurer, Sir Hugh Conway, who had fought on Henry’s side at Bosworth and later been treasurer of Ireland. Another of those present was the deputy governor, Sir Richard Nanfan of Trethewell in Cornwall, Flamank’s father-in-law. ‘A very grave and ancient knight’
²
, Nanfan was born in 1445, had also fought for Henry at Bosworth and led several important diplomatic missions to Spain. (He employed a chaplain, a clever young man called Thomas Wolsey.) Also present at the meeting were Sir Sampson Norton, the master porter, who had been Master of the Ordinance, William Nanfan, who was probably Richard’s brother, and Flamank himself. Conway made them swear not to reveal what they were going to discuss to anybody else, except ‘to the king’s grace if need shall require’.

Conway began by warning Sir Richard that he was in grave danger and should thank God he had so far escaped, adding that he knew the identity of the men sent to murder the deputy governor and who was behind them. Naturally, Nanfan wanted to know at once who they were, but Conway said he would tell him later. Everybody present had enemies at Calais, he explained, especially among those who had secured their posts through the influence of the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Daubeney. ‘I and master porter [are] as far into the dance as ye be.’ The only possible reason for their enmity that he could think of – he suggested with a perhaps assumed naïveté – was that ‘we follow the king’s pleasure’.

Conway then hinted that Lord Daubeney’s loyalty to the dynasty might be suspect – ‘hard it is to know men’s minds if God should send a sudden change’. Sir Richard broke in at this point, to say that he would swear on the sacrament that the chamberlain (who had also fought for Henry at Bosworth) was as loyal to the king as any man living. Sir Sampson Norton agreed with him. Nanfan conceded, however, that Giles Daubeney had been very ‘shlake’ (slack) on at least one occasion, when he had failed to disperse the Cornish rebels of 1499 before they reached Kent, a failure that angered Henry.

After further discussion, Sir Hugh was forced to retract and to admit that ‘my lord chamberlain … loveth the king as well as any man living’. He added, however, that ‘it hath been seen that change of worlds hath caused change of mind’. Perhaps he was afraid that he might be replaced by one of Daubeney’s numerous protégés.

What he really wanted to talk about was something more serious still. He went on to remind the meeting that ‘the king’s grace is but a weak man and sickly, not likely to be long lived’, and only recently had fallen dangerously ill at his manor of Wanstead in Surrey. At the time, Sir Hugh had found himself ‘among many great personages’, who were discussing what would happen should Henry die. He did not give the meeting their names, but he recalled how ‘some of them spoke of my lord of Buckingham, saying that he was a noble man and would be a royal ruler’, reported Flamank. ‘Others there were that spoke, he said, likewise of your traitor, Edmund de la Pole, but none of them, he said, spoke of my lord prince’ – by this Sir Hugh meant the late Prince Arthur.