The Woodvilles: The Wars of the Roses and England's Most Infamous Family (19 page)

On 19 January 1478, after the wedding of Edward’s young son, Parliament opened with Bishop Rotherham setting the tone with St Paul’s words, ‘For he beareth not the sword in vain’. The chief business of the Parliament was to try Clarence. His attainder, introduced by the king himself, read:

    The king is mindful of the many conspiracies against him which he has repressed in the past, and although many of the rebels and traitors have been punished as an example to others yet, as a merciful prince, he spared not only the rank and file but also some of the movers and stirrers of such treasons. Notwithstanding, a conspiracy against him, the queen, their son and heir and a great part of the nobility of the land has recently come to his knowledge, which treason is more heinous and unnatural than any previous one because it originates from the king’s brother the duke of Clarence, whom the king had always loved and generously rewarded. In spite of this, the duke grievously offended the king in the past, procuring his exile from the realm and labouring parliament to exclude him and his heirs from the crown. All of which the king forgave, but the duke continued to conspire against him, intending his destruction by both internal and external forces. He sought to turn his subjects against him by saying that Thomas Burdet was falsely put to death and that the king resorted to necromancy. He also said that the king was a bastard, not fit to reign, and made men take oaths of allegiance to him without excepting their loyalty to the king. He accused the king of taking his livelihood from him, and intending his destruction. He secured an exemplification under the great seal of an agreement made between him and Queen Margaret promising him the crown if Henry VI’s line failed. He planned to send his son and heir abroad to win support, bringing a false child to Warwick castle in his place. He planned to raise war against the king within England and made men promise to be ready at an hour’s notice. The duke has thus shown himself incorrigible and to pardon him would threaten the common weal, which the king is bound to maintain.
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For the Crowland Chronicler, this brotherly strife was almost too painful to write about:

    The mind recoils from describing what followed in the next Parliament – so sad was the dispute between two brothers of such noble character. No-one argued against the duke except the king; no-one answered the king except the duke. Some persons, however, were introduced concerning whom many people wondered whether they performed the offices of accuses or witnesses. […] The duke swept aside all charges with a disclaimer offering, if it were acceptable, to uphold his case by personal combat. Why make a long story of it?
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Parliament condemned the Duke of Clarence to death on 7 February 1478. Edward, however, delayed carrying out the sentence until the Speaker of the Commons asked that it be carried out. On 18 February 1478, the Duke of Clarence was executed privately, quite possibly through drowning in a vat of Malmsey wine or in a bath made from a Malmsey barrel – a curious method of death indeed, but the only one specified by the English and foreign chronicles. Before his death, Clarence asked that certain land be given to Anthony Woodville ‘in consideration of the injuries perpetrated on him and his parents’ by the duke. Edward IV carried out this wish.
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Where do the Woodvilles fit into all this? In 1483, Dominic Mancini, an Italian observer who had been visiting in England earlier that year, wrote:

    The queen then remembered the insults to her family and the calumnies with which she was reproached, namely that according to established usage she was not the legitimate wife of the king. Thus she concluded that her offspring to the throne would never come to the throne, unless the duke of Clarence was removed; and of this she easily persuaded the king. […] At that time [of Clarence’s execution] Richard duke of Gloucester was so overcome with grief for his brother, that he could not dissimulate so well, but that he was overheard to say that he would one day avenge his brother’s death. Thenceforth he came very rarely to court […] After the execution of the duke of Clarence, and while Richard, as we have said, kept himself to his own lands, the queen ennobled many of her family. Besides, she attracted to her party many strangers and introduced them to court, so that they alone should manage the public and private businesses of the crown, surround the king, and have bands of retainers, give or sell offices, and finally rule the very king himself.
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As a contemporary observer of the events leading up to Richard III’s taking the crown, Mancini is an invaluable source, whose account is often consistent with English accounts. When Mancini speaks of events occurring several years before his visit to England, however, he is less reliable, and there are several reasons why his claim that Elizabeth procured the death of Clarence should be regarded with scepticism. Mancini’s statements about Elizabeth ennobling her family
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Clarence’s demise are demonstrably wrong, nor is there evidence of ‘strangers’ being introduced to court by the queen. As for Gloucester’s brooding Hamlet-like in the north, there is nothing to suggest that he avoided court because of the Woodvilles; rather, he stayed in the north because of his enormous responsibilities there, which demanded his full attention. He came to court when family ties demanded it, as when his sister Margaret visited in 1480, or when his responsibilities as a great lord required it, as when Parliament met early in 1483. As A.J. Pollard points out, these slurs by Mancini likely have their origins in the propaganda being put forth by Richard, Duke of Gloucester in the spring and summer of 1483, when he was in the process of seizing the crown and was intent on destroying the Woodvilles.
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But what of Mancini’s claims that Elizabeth feared Clarence because she believed that her children would never come to the throne if he survived? Mancini’s explanation is that in 1483, Richard claimed that Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth was invalid because before Edward married Elizabeth, Edward had been married by proxy to a continental bride, the betrothal having been arranged by the Earl of Warwick.
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In fact, Gloucester’s official claim, as enshrined in the 1484 Act of Parliament spelling out Richard’s claim to the throne, was not that Edward IV had been betrothed to a foreign princess, but that he had been precontracted to an Eleanor Butler, a widowed daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury.
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One source, the Burgundian Chronicler, Philippe de Commynes, would claim that Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, who had been appointed keeper of Edward IV’s privy seal in 1460, actually married Edward to Eleanor, although he adds that Edward’s promise was made to the lady only to delude her so that he could enjoy her body.
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From this, and from the arrest of Stillington for obscure reasons in 1478, it has been suggested, chiefly by Paul Murray Kendall, that Clarence had learned about Edward’s previous marriage from Stillington and was killed at the instigation of the Woodvilles because they could not risk the truth being known.
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Kendall’s theory has attracted a great deal of support, yet there are sound reasons to doubt it. Prior to 1483, no trace of any rumour that Edward IV’s marriage was invalid can be found, though such an allegation would have been of immeasurable value to the king’s and queen’s enemies. Kendall’s suggestion that Clarence knew of the precontract but dared not to reveal it makes little sense, as Mortimer Levine points out, since he apparently had no fear of making the even more explosive accusation that Edward IV himself was illegitimate.
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Moreover, if Clarence or anyone else had been raising uncomfortable questions about the validity of Edward’s marriage, the solution lay in Edward’s hands via an application to the pope to smooth out any irregularities: Eleanor Butler, having died in 1468, was in no position to complain.

As for Stillington, his arrest, which was noted in passing by Elizabeth Stonor on 6 March 1478, may or may not have some connection with Clarence; he was pardoned in June 1478 for the offence of uttering words prejudicial to the king and his state. No more specific information is given to us.
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Even before his pardon, however, he was appointed to a commission of the peace on 14 April 1478, suggesting a short imprisonment and perhaps an equally short royal displeasure.
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Moreover, having released Stillington, Edward IV did not treat him as a person with dangerous knowledge; indeed, on 21 January 1479, he was appointed (along with the Earl of Essex, the Bishop of Ely, and Anthony Woodville) to treat with the Bishop of Elne, Louis XI’s ambassador in England.
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Surely a man ruthless enough to murder his own brother in order to keep his marital escapades from coming to light would have not risked the possibility that a disgruntled Stillington might gossip to the French. Following this assignment, life went on smoothly enough for Stillington, who continued to be named to commissions of the peace by Edward IV.
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As for Kendall’s claim that Stillington ‘was held in intense enmity by the Woodvilles’ after Clarence’s death, there is simply no evidence to support this; whatever the Woodvilles’ thoughts about Stillington were, no one took the trouble to record them.

In the end, attempts to deflect responsibility for Clarence’s death off the shoulders of Edward IV and onto those of the Woodvilles are unconvincing. Regardless of his motives for proceeding against his brother, Edward IV was no one’s puppet, as Warwick had found out in the 1460s. He took the leading role in the prosecution of Clarence: as Crowland puts it with stark simplicity, ‘No-one argued against the duke except the king’.

There is no reason to assume that the Woodvilles did anything to dissuade Edward from his purpose; indeed, given the deaths of the queen’s father and of John Woodville at Warwick’s and Clarence’s hands, they might well have approved and applauded the king’s actions. They might well have done their part in making certain that Parliament was complaisant. But the evidence does not point to more than this. The simple fact is that Clarence’s record of disloyalty, his coldblooded destruction of his wife’s old servants, and his association with men who had committed the treasonous act of forecasting the king’s death in itself made him a volatile and dangerous subject. In a ruthless age, such a man was courting death, and no help in the wooing would have been required from the Woodvilles or from anyone else.

Having disposed of Clarence, Edward IV was free to turn his attention to foreign affairs, specifically, Scotland. Edward IV’s daughter, Cecily, had already been betrothed to James III’s heir. Now James III of Scotland proposed that his sister, Margaret, marry Anthony Woodville. Earl Rivers might not have had the rank or wealth to appeal to the Burgundian heiress, but he clearly was considered suitable for a king’s sister.
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Edward was amenable to the match. On 14 December 1478, he appointed the Bishop of Rochester and Edward Woodville – the latter making his first recorded appearance on the diplomatic front – to enter into negotiations, which quickly bore fruit. Margaret was to have a dowry of 4,000 marks, which because of James’s straitened finances would be deducted from the payments Edward was making toward the dowry of his daughter, Cecily. Margaret was to come to England by 16 May 1479, for which purpose Edward issued her and a retinue of 300 as safe conduct. On 6 March 1479, the Scottish parliament granted James 20,000 marks toward the expenses of the marriage.
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The bride’s arrival was delayed, however, apparently by James’s difficulties with his own troublesome brother, the Duke of Albany. Edward IV nonetheless made plans for the wedding, which was to be held at Nottingham. On 21 August 1479, he instructed the magistrates of York that when Margaret arrived there on 9 October 1479, they should give her ‘loving and hearty cheer’.
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While Anthony awaited his bride, Queen Elizabeth awaited the arrival of yet another child. Katherine was probably born in early 1479 at Eltham; her name suggests that the queen’s youngest sister, Katherine, Duchess of Buckingham, acted as one of her godmothers.
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