The Woodvilles: The Wars of the Roses and England's Most Infamous Family (3 page)

Henry married the 15-year-old Margaret on 22 April 1445 in a quiet ceremony at Titchfield Abbey presided over by William Aiscough, Bishop of Salisbury. As Duchess of Bedford, Jacquetta must have been prominent at the queen’s coronation at Westminster on 30 May 1445, while Richard Woodville likely was among those jousting at the celebratory tournaments which followed. With the prospect of peace and of a healthy young queen producing a quiverful of children, the future must have looked bright. In fact, Henry’s reign had started on a relentless and ruthless path downhill.

For the moment, though, all seemed well. After the death of Henry V on 31 August 1422, his queen, Catherine of Valois, had lived in the household of her young son, Henry VI, until around 1430, when she secretly married Owen Tudor – a match that would put their grandson on the throne as Henry VII – and moved to Much Hadham in Hertfordshire, where she gave birth to a son. Catherine’s retirement into private life (she died in 1437) meant that until Henry’s marriage in 1445, the court was a male preserve.
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The arrival of a queen and a kinswoman opened the way for Jacquetta to become a prominent figure at court. The queen’s jewel accounts, which survive for 1445–49 and 1451–53, show that Jacquetta’s servants received exceptionally generous New Year’s gifts. Jacquetta herself received a silver cup costing £35 6
d
in 1447 and a gold tablet with sapphires and other jewels, costing £16, in 1452.
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Richard Woodville enjoyed royal favour as well. On 9 May 1448, he became a baron; the origins of his new title, Lord Rivers, have been the subject of much speculation but are unknown. Further honours followed in 1450 when, following his nomination by Thomas, Lord Scales, John, Viscount Beaumont, Sir John Beauchamp, and Sir John Fastolf, he was made a Knight of the Garter on 4 August.
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Henry VI’s government, however, was lurching toward disaster. A few months after his bride’s arrival in England, the peace-loving Henry VI had secretly agreed to hand over Maine to the French and to Margaret’s father. The English reluctance at effecting Henry’s promise and a disastrous scheme by the English to capture the rich city of Fougères on behalf of Brittany led to a French declaration of war. One by one, English-occupied towns fell to the French or, worse, were surrendered without battle. On 12 August 1450, eight days after Lord Rivers’s garter was strapped to his knee, Cherbourg, the last English fortress in Normandy, fell to the French.
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The year 1450 was as miserable at home as it was abroad. On 2 May 1450, William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, from whom Richard Woodville had purchased Grafton, was murdered as he sailed toward Burgundy under a sentence of banishment. Suffolk, who had taken the leading role in negotiating Henry’s marriage to Margaret, was largely blamed for the handover of Maine and the losses in France.

The government was still reeling from Suffolk’s murder when an uprising, led by one ‘Jack Cade’, began in the southeast of England in June. Lord Rivers, along with Viscount Beaumont and Lords Lovell, Scales, and Dudley, were commissioned to suppress the rebellion.
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Later that summer, Rivers and a number of other men would be indicted in Kent before a commission headed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and of York, Bishop Wainflete, and Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, for acts committed while they were pursuing the rebels.
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Rivers himself, along with Dudley and Thomas Danyell and a force of about 2,000 persons, was accused of assaulting John Miche at Eynsford on 18 June 1450, ‘so that he despaired of his life’, and of taking away 46
s
8
d
in cash, along with four pairs of sheets and a coverlet. Dudley later received a pardon. The outcome of the investigation as far as Rivers in concerned is not known, and we cannot tell at this juncture whether Rivers was personally guilty of any excesses, although at the very least he can likely be faulted for allowing his men to run wild. Cade and his men, however justified their grievances against Henry VI’s government might have been, certainly did not have clean hands. They had murdered several people, including James Fiennes, Lord Saye, the royal treasurer, and his son-in-law William Crowmer, the Sheriff of Kent. For the amusement of the spectators, the men’s severed heads were hoisted on poles and made to kiss each other. Later, Saye’s dead body would be tied to the saddle of Cade’s own horse and dragged through the streets.
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In September 1450, following the suppression of Cade’s rebellion, Richard, Duke of York, returned to England from Ireland, where he had been serving as the king’s lieutenant. It was an uneasy homecoming, for Henry VI and Margaret had not produced any children and Richard was therefore next in line for the throne. Cade at one point in the rebellion had adopted the name of ‘John Mortimer’, a name associated with York’s family, and the rebels’ demands had included one that the king ‘take about him a noble person, the true blood of the Realm, that is to say the high and mighty prince the Duke of York’.
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It was therefore necessary that York defend himself against suspicions of treason. Complicating matters was the return to England the previous month of another duke, Edmund, Duke of Somerset, whose surrender of Rouen and Caen in France without battle had infuriated the English populace. The king, however, did not bear a grudge against Somerset, who soon stepped into the dead man’s shoes of Suffolk as the king’s chief minister. In turn, York took up the role of the opposition. He was particularly bitter about Somerset’s actions in France, which York regarded not only as treasonous but almost as a personal affront. York had been lieutenant general before Somerset, but had not been reappointed, apparently to his disappointment; instead, Somerset had received the post, probably in order to secure his cooperation in ceding Maine, where he held property.
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It was during this period that the Commons demanded that twenty-nine persons, including Somerset, be barred access to the king. Lynda Pidgeon has suggested, incorrectly, that Lord Rivers was one of them.
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In fact, as P.A. Johnson points out, Rivers was one of those men who had been indicted the previous summer but who were
not
included in the Commons’ list.
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Indeed, according to a German envoy, Rivers and Lord Scales accompanied York when he presented his grievances to the king.
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For the short term, Somerset was the victor in the rivalry between him and York. He was appointed Captain of Calais – along with Gascony all that was left to the English in France – in September 1451. Lord Rivers, along with sixty men at arms, joined him there in December 1451 and became Lieutenant of Calais soon afterward.
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In the spring of 1453, the king and the queen at last had some good news: after over eight years of marriage, Margaret was pregnant. The joy was short-lived. In July 1453, Gascony fell to the French, and a few days later, Henry imploded. For nearly a year and a half, he would be speechless and unresponsive to his surroundings.

While her husband’s wits were in abeyance, Margaret at last gave birth to a child, Edward, on 13 October 1453. In a brave show of normalcy, preparations went ahead for her churching, a ceremony which marked a new mother’s purification and return to public life. The great ladies of the land, including Jacquetta, were all invited to the churching, which was scheduled for 18 November 1453.
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Margaret of Anjou had been raised in a family where women were prepared to take charge when necessary. As it became clear that Henry’s illness was likely to continue indefinitely, she prepared a petition asking, as one shocked observer described it, that she ‘have the whole rule of this land’.
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This was a step too far for the English, who in March 1454 instead made the Duke of York the protector of the nation during Henry’s incapacity. Somerset had already been imprisoned in the Tower, where he remained without trial throughout York’s protectorate. York appointed himself Captain of Calais in Somerset’s place, but was unable to secure the loyalty of the garrison, under the command of Lord Rivers and Lionel, Lord Welles, the captain of the castle.
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On Christmas Day of 1454, Henry came out of his stupor as abruptly as he had fallen into it. Henry acknowledged his 14-month-old son, ordered the release of Somerset, and ended the Duke of York’s protectorate.

Once again, Somerset was in the king’s favour. This was not a situation which York could tolerate, and on 22 May 1455, he ended it bloodily. Allying himself with Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, and Salisbury’s son, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, he confronted the king at St Albans. In the street battle that followed, Somerset, probably targeted for death by York’s men, was killed outside the Castle Inn.
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Henry VI’s misfortunes at St Albans seems to have caused him to have become at least partially incapacitated for a time – or at least it suited the interests of the Duke of York to say so. In November 1455, a second protectorate was established. Due to lack of popular support, it was short-lived, ending with York’s resignation in February 1456. Meanwhile, with Somerset’s death, the way was open to negotiate with the garrison at Calais, and in July 1456, the Earl of Warwick entered Calais as its captain. Rivers surrendered his post.The balance of power, however, was to undergo yet another shift.

Margaret of Anjou had last come onto the scene during her husband’s illness in 1453. Her bid for the regency had been unsuccessful, and she had remained largely in the shadows until the time of the second protectorate, when she emerged with a vengeance. It may have been Margaret, described in a letter of 9 February 1456 as ‘a great and strong laboured woman [who] spareth no pain to sue her things to an intent and conclusion to her power’,
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who worked behind the scenes to gain support for ending York’s second protectorate.
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Margaret’s first move was to move her household in the spring of 1456 to the Midlands, where Henry’s household soon followed her that summer. The effect was to shift the court from the uneasy atmosphere of London to the friendlier locale where Margaret could attract support against any threats to her husband’s rule. During the court’s extended stay in the Midlands, which would last until November 1457, Margaret often visited Coventry. In May 1457, she saw the city’s famous passion plays. Prominent in the queen’s party were Lord Rivers and his wife, who along with the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham and their children, and the older and younger Countesses of Shrewsbury enjoyed refreshments provided by the mayor: red wine, capons, pikes, pippins, oranges, ginger, peascods, and comfits.
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At an earlier visit by the queen, in 1456, the mayor gave Lord Rivers a glass of rose water. The drink, which was thought to have healthful qualities, was duly noted in the records.
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King Henry, though much in the shadow of his assertive queen during this period, managed to carry out one of his own objectives. The men killed at St Albans were survived by their angry young heirs, especially Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, who had threatened York and the Nevilles on several occasions and whose escapades had resulted in several watchmen getting killed.
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To put an end to the hostilities, Henry had summoned his lords and ordered them to hammer out a settlement with the aid of a panel of judges and bishops.
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To solemnise the agreement, on 25 March 1458, the king, the queen, and the warring lords processed solemnly through St Paul’s in what was known as ‘Loveday’.

A round of festivities followed Loveday. Lord Rivers was probably past his best tourneying days, but his eldest son, Anthony, along with the Duke of Somerset, jousted in front of the king and queen at the Tower and later at Greenwich.
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Henry’s longed-for peace was not to last. Historians have assigned various causes, but it is clear that Warwick, stationed at Calais, did not help the situation by turning to piracy in the summer of 1458. Although the English people found the earl’s swashbuckling exploits to be endearing, the king and the neutral powers whose ships were attacked were less impressed.
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In July, Lord Rivers was appointed to head a commission meeting at Rochester Castle to investigate Warwick’s attacks on a Hanseatic fleet.
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As Arlene Okerlund has pointed out, being investigated by a mere baron must have rankled the earl, a man not known for his humility at the best at times.
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All-out war erupted in 1459. The events leading up to the renewed hostilities are murky. Contemporary chroniclers, generally sympathetic to York, laid the blame on the queen, as have many historians, but recent historians have been less indulgent toward York and his followers.
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What seems more likely is simply that York and his followers had determined to seize power. They began their effort in September 1459, when Salisbury left his estates at Middleham and Warwick left Calais with the plan of meeting York at Ludlow. A portion of the royal army intercepted Salisbury’s forces at Blore Heath on 23 September 1459. Salisbury won the battle, but more forces were on the way.