The Woodvilles: The Wars of the Roses and England's Most Infamous Family (11 page)

The Earl of Warwick then began brewing trouble of his own. His rebellion started at the altar. For some time, the earl had been hoping to marry his eldest daughter, Isabel, to Edward IV’s brother George, Duke of Clarence, and when the king balked at the idea, Warwick and his prospective son-in-law, aided by the earl’s younger brother, the Archbishop of York, secretly procured a papal dispensation in March 1469 for the couple to marry.
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That same spring, a pair of mysterious characters named Robin of Redesdale and Robin of Holderness stirred risings against the king in Yorkshire, which were put down handily by Warwick’s younger brother, John Neville, Earl of Northumberland. When another rising broke out around 28 May 1469, ostensibly by Robin of Redesdale again, the king was not unduly alarmed. He went on pilgrimage to Walsingham, taking with him his father-in-law, Anthony and John Woodville, and his younger brother Richard, among others.
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Elizabeth had borne her husband his third daughter, Cecily, on 20 March 1469;
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as Walsingham was strongly associated with childbirth, perhaps the king was giving thanks for the latest arrival as well as making a heavenly request that his next child would be a son. As he made his way toward the shrine, he was making preparations to go to the north in person. The queen, who would have recently returned to public life after her churching, was staying at Fotheringay, where the king arrived on 25 June and spent a week.
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Warwick too was travelling – to Calais, with his brother the archbishop, his daughter Isabel, and Edward’s brother George in tow. This was no innocent voyage, for this latest rebellion, far from being the product of spontaneous outrage, was almost certainly instigated by Warwick, with Robin de Redesdale being the
nom de guerre
of a member of the prominent Conyers family, who were Warwick’s retainers.
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The earl arrived in Calais on 6 July, soon after which Edward’s suspicions of his cousin and brother were awakened. On 9 July, he wrote to Warwick, Clarence, and the Archbishop of York, asking courteously that they come to him and refute the rumours that had been circulating about them. Instead, at Calais on 11 July in front of an assembled company which included five Knights of the Garter, the Archbishop of York officiated at the wedding of Clarence and Isabel.
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Clarence did not tarry in the marital bedchamber. The next day, he and his new father-in-law issued a manifesto, one of the sort that would make any medieval king’s heart sink. Comparing Edward to Edward II, Richard II, and Henry VI, all of whom had been deposed (and two of whom had been murdered afterward), Warwick and Clarence accused Edward of having fallen prey to the ‘covetous rule and guiding of certain seditious persons’, namely, Earl Rivers and his wife Jacquetta, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devon, Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, John, Lord Audley, Sir John Woodville and his brothers, John Fogge, and ‘others of their mischievous rule, opinion, and assent’.
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All of these people were upstarts, at least in Warwick’s eyes. William Herbert, a Welshman known as Edward IV’s ‘master-lock’, had been made the Earl of Pembroke in September 1468; he was Edward’s principal lieutenant in South Wales and the first full-blooded Welshman to enter the English peerage.
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Humphrey Stafford was an even newer earl, having been granted his Devon title in May 1469 along with the forfeited lands of Henry Courtenay, executed in January.
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John Fogge, a former treasurer of Edward IV’s household, was a royal councillor and was also married to Alice Haute, whose mother, Joan Woodville, was Earl Rivers’s sister.
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John Tuchet, Lord Audley, had become a Yorkist after being taken prisoner at Calais in 1460.
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None of these men were parasites; all gave the king valuable services in return for the royal favour they enjoyed. But Warwick wanted them gone. To accomplish this end, he summoned his supporters to meet him at Coventry on 16 July. Having crossed the Channel, he marched from Canterbury to London, then began a march toward Coventry.
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Meanwhile, as ‘Robin of Redesdale’ and his northern followers headed south, the earls of Devon and Herbert led troops to confront them. The details of the battle that followed are thoroughly murky. Even the date is in dispute; Barry Lewis has argued for 24 July 1469.
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The outcome, at least, is clear: Herbert’s men were defeated by the rebels, after a fierce battle to which Devon’s men arrived late or even not at all. Herbert and his younger brother were captured.

Warwick and his son-in-law arrived at Northampton, where they began the congenial business of killing their enemies. Herbert and his brother were executed there – entirely illegally, as they had not been in rebellion against the king – on 27 July.

During this time, Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by her young daughters, had been enjoying the hospitality of the town of Norwich, following her husband’s successful visit to the city during his recent pilgrimage.
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The town had spared no effort in impressing the queen, even engaging the services of a John Parnell to assist it in staging pageants. When the big day arrived, sometime in the middle of July, a stage had been erected at the Westwick Gate. On stage were two giants made of wood and leather, stuffed with hay, as well as two patriarchs, twelve apostles, sixteen virgins, and Gabriel, played by a local friar. A Gilbert Spirling staged a pageant of the Salutation of Mary and Elizabeth, a theme evidently chosen as a nod to the queen. At Blackfriars, the queen, seated in a great chair brought over from Norwich Cathedral for her use, enjoyed a musical performance by a boys’ choir. The occasion was literally dampened by a torrential rain, but the townspeople, well prepared for disaster, hustled the queen to dry lodgings inside the Blackfriars and quickly moved the props and performers out of harm’s way.

As the citizens of Norwich relaxed after this latest royal visit, Edward IV, writing from Nottingham on 29 July, thanked the citizens of Coventry for sending men to his aid. He seems to have been unaware of the disaster at Edgecote.
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Shortly thereafter he rode south, where at some point most of his entourage seems to have deserted him, perhaps spooked by the news of the battle. Learning of his whereabouts and his vulnerable position, George Neville, Archbishop of York, captured the king, acting on the advice of Warwick and Clarence. England was now in the bizarre position of having two captive kings.

Edward IV, no doubt reflecting on the fates of Edward II, Richard II, and Henry VI, as encouraged to do by Warwick’s manifesto, was at Coventry on 2 August and at Warwick Castle from 8 to 13 August.
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At Nottingham, he had sent his Woodville in-laws away for safety, Earl Rivers and his son John to Wales, Anthony Woodville to Norfolk. Waurin (not, however, an eyewitness) tells us that the king, believing that ‘everything came from the envy that people had for the said Lord Rivers’, spoke to Rivers, who responded, ‘Sire, I am ready to do your will, because I do not wish that there should be discord between you and your blood on account of me’.
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Nothing is heard of Earl Rivers again until 12 August, when, in the same lawless spirit that had prompted the executions of Herbert and his brother, father and son were executed at Gosford Green outside of Coventry, having been captured at Chepstow.
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Another death soon followed: The Earl of Devon, who had escaped from Edgecote, was caught by a mob at Bridgwater in Somerset and murdered on 17 August.
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We know nothing about the last hours of the queen’s father and brother. It was a sad end for Earl Rivers, whom fortune had flung so high, and for John, only about age 25. In June 1470, Jacquetta brought an action in King’s Bench against those she held responsible for her husband’s death, including Warwick, who by then had fled for France. Nothing seems to have come of it, probably due to the political upheavals of 1470–71 and the death of the main culprit at Barnet in May 1471.
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Later, Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy, would provide in his will for masses to be said for the souls of Earl Rivers and John, who must have been friends of his.
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For his part, Anthony Woodville arranged for his younger brother’s memory to be commemorated at Eton College, for which, he recalled, John had had ‘zeal love and sing[u]ler devotion’. Anthony may have had his brother buried there. Waurin indicates that the king also mourned the deaths of Earl Rivers and John, ‘because he loved them very much’.
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At what time Elizabeth Woodville learned of the deaths of her father and her brother and of the capture of her husband is unknown, but she appears to have returned to London by 31 July, when the mayor and aldermen voted to make her a gift of wine.
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On 16 August, the Milanese ambassador reported from London, ‘The Earl of Warwick, as astute a man as ever was Ulysses, is at the king’s side, and from what they say the king is not at liberty to go where he wishes. The queen is here and keeps very scant state’.
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In the midst of their mourning, the queen and her family also had the fate of Edward IV to worry about. Would Henry VI be brought out of captivity to rule as Warwick’s puppet? More likely, would Warwick’s new son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, take his brother Edward’s place on the throne? Or would Edward be the subject of a protectorate, as the hapless Henry VI had been after the first Battle of St Albans? While Warwick pondered these possibilities, he appointed Sir John Langstrother as treasurer in place of Earl Rivers and himself as Chief Justice and Chamberlain of South Wales in Pembroke’s place. He also summoned Parliament, presumably to give its stamp of approval to whatever course of action he had in mind.
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But events intervened. Far from settling into docility after the killing of the king’s favourites, the mischief-makers of England took full advantage of this confused state of affairs. London rioted; the Burgundian ambassadors there, probably much to Warwick’s chagrin, were able to help sooth matters.
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The Duke of Norfolk, who claimed a right to the Paston family’s prized Caister Castle, laid siege to it, crisply snubbing the Duke of Clarence’s attempt to intervene – a failure which hardly boded well for a reign of King George.
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The Berkeley and Talbot family feud reignited, as did the feud between the Stanleys and the Harringtons. More problematically, a cousin of Warwick’s, Sir Humphrey Neville, staged a revolt on behalf of Henry VI. This rising proved impossible to put down without royal authority, and it seems that Warwick was compelled to back down. Edward raised troops in his own name, crushed the rebellion, beheaded Humphrey and his brother, summoned his lords, and returned to London in October, a free man.
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Warwick’s rebellion had expired with a whimper, but not before costing two of the Woodvilles, and others, their lives. Oddly, a third Woodville, Anthony, had not shared their fate: around the time of his father’s and brother’s deaths, he had been captured and taken to Norwich, where he remained as a prisoner until 25 August, at which time he was removed to an unnamed location. Nothing indicates why Warwick spared his life; perhaps Edward IV’s reaction when told of the death of his other followers had shaken the earl’s nerve, or perhaps Warwick had decided for some reason that Anthony’s execution would not be advisable.
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By the autumn of 1469, soon after Edward IV’s own return to London, Anthony Woodville, now Earl Rivers, was back at court, where he was soon mingling uneasily with Warwick, who at least on the surface had reconciled with the king. Life was very far from returning to normal for the Woodvilles, however. The matriarch of the family, Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, was facing trial as an accused witch.