The Woodvilles: The Wars of the Roses and England's Most Infamous Family (32 page)

These two absences did not keep other family members away. During the traditional procession from the Tower to Westminster that took place the day before the coronation, Katherine, Duchess of Bedford and Buckingham rode in the first chariot following the queen. With her was Elizabeth of York’s younger sister, Cecily. A few places back, the duchess’s ladies followed in their own chariot. At the feast after the coronation, the duchess sat at the left hand of the queen, who was served such dishes as hart, pheasant, capons, lamprey, crane, pike, carp, perch, and custard, preceded and followed by an elaborate ‘subtlety’, a decorative dish that was as much a feast for the eyes as it was for the mouth. Kneeling on either side of the queen were the Countess Rivers – Anthony’s widow – and the Countess of Oxford, who were required to hold a kerchief before the queen at ‘certain times’, i.e. if she needed to spit out her food or perhaps use a toothpick. The Countess Rivers, still a young woman, probably found the kneeling easy enough to endure, but one’s bones ache in sympathy for the Countess of Oxford, well into middle age, whose knees had to pay the price for royal protocol. The Woodville men were represented by Richard, Earl Rivers.

Edward Woodville is not recorded as being at the coronation, but he was certainly not in royal disfavour. The following year, on 27 April 1488, he was invested with the highest chivalric honour in England – the Order of the Garter.
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Described by S.B. Chrimes as ‘the ultimate mark of honour favoured by Henry VII’, the Garter was an honour Edward’s father and his brother Anthony had also achieved.
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The queen and the king’s mother, along with other ladies including Countess Rivers, were among the company assembled at Windsor for the feast of St George. The ceremonies, which included a requiem mass at which Edward offered the helm and crest of a deceased knight, John, Lord Dudley, inspired a burst of poetry:

        O knightly order, clothed in robes with garter:

        The queen’s grace, thy mother in the same;

        The nobles of thy realm, rich in array, after;

        Lords, knights and ladies unto thy great fame.

        Now shall all ambassates know thy noble name.

        By they feast royal. Now joyous may thou be,

        To see thy king so flowering in dignity!

Edward had other concerns than the new garter adorning his calf, however. Francis, Duke of Brittany, who had offered succour and support to Edward as well as the king during their exile, was threatened with a French invasion.
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As Henry VII owed his very crown to the aid of France, he was in a difficult position.

Edward longed to help his old friend. As Vergil tells it:

    Edward Woodville, a stout and courageous man […], either to avoid the tedium of peace or moved by his love of the duke, earnestly beseeched King Henry that by his permission he might go to Britanny with some band of soldiers to aid his friends. And, lest the King of France could reproach Henry for this, he said he would go secretly with no supplies, which would give a show of unfeigned flight. The king, who hoped that a peace would be arranged by his ambassadors, was so far from indulging Edward’s ardor that he strictly forbade him to undertake any scheme of the kind, thinking it foreign to his dignity to offend Charles, to whom he hoped to ingratiate himself in a matter of little importance which he thought would do nothing to aid the Duke of Britanny. But Edward, when the king had forbidden him to do as he wished, decided to act without his knowledge, and quickly and secretly went to the Isle of Wight, of which he was lieutenant. And from there, having gathered a band of soldiers to the number of approximately four hundred, he crossed over to Britanny and joined with them against the French.
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Edward crossed the seas with his 400 men in ships provided by the Breton ambassadors. Meanwhile, his preparations had inspired others to follow suit. Writing to his brother, John Paston III, William Paston III reported:

    [W]hereas it was said that the Lord Woodville and others should have gone over into Brittany to have aided the Duke of Brittany. I cannot tell you of nonesuch aid. But upon that saying there came many men to Southampton, where it was said that he should have taken shipping to have waited upon him over, and so when he was countermanded those that resorted there to have gone over with him tarried there still, in hope that they should have been licenced to go over, and when they saw no likelihood that they should have licence there was two hundred of them that got them into a Breton ship the which was come over with salt, and bade the master set them a land in Brittany. And they had not sailed past six leagues but they espied a Frenchman, and the Frenchman made over to them, and they feared as though they would not have meddled with them, and all the Englishmen went under the hatches so that they showed no more but those that came to Southampton with the ship, to cause the Frenchmen to be the more gladder to meddle with them. And so the Frenchmen boarded them, and then they were under the hatches came up and so took the Frenchmen and carried the men, ship, and all into Brittany.
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Edward had sparked an international incident. Vergil tells us that the French suspected a trick on King Henry’s part and that the English ambassadors in France feared for their own safety, although ‘international law prevailed’. To mollify King Charles, Henry wrote a letter declaring that Edward had been expressly forbidden to make the trip to Brittany and that he had arrested the Earl of Arundel’s younger brother when he tried to follow Edward’s example. For good measure, Henry added, most of the men had gone without armour and were in any case low-lives who had taken asylum for their crimes and misdemeanours. It would soon be apparent, Henry concluded smugly, that Edward had been ‘badly counselled’ in making such a foolish attempt.
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King Charles, Vergil tells us, did not put much credence in the king’s letter, but put a good face on things. Meanwhile, Edward was enjoying the hospitality of Rennes, which welcomed him on 5 June by breaking open two barrels of claret and two barrels of white wine.

King Charles instructed his commander, General de la Trémoille, on 5 July to ‘make war as vigorously as you can’, an order which the general followed with enthusiasm. On 14 July, King Henry signed a peace treaty with France. The next day, Ferdinand and Isabella, whose ambassadors were discussing the possibility of a marital alliance with England, put in a good word for Edward, describing him as their faithful servant and asking Henry to forgive him.
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By this time troops had streamed into Rennes, including contingents contributed by Emperor Maximilian and King Ferdinand. On 25 July, Duke Francis, after meeting with a council of war that included Edward, determined to go to the relief of Fougères and St Aubin, both under siege. Although it turned out to be too late to save the fortresses, which had surrendered, the Bretons determined, as reported by Molinet, ‘to engage the French […] as best they could’.
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The Marshal de Rieux was in overall command of the Breton forces, Trémoille in charge of the French. To fool the French into believing that there were a large number of English troops, the Breton army dressed 1,700 Bretons in surcoats bearing the red cross of St George, like the men of Edward’s forces.

As reported by Hall:

    When both the armies were approaching to the other, the ordinance shot so terribly and with such a violence, that it sore damaged and encumbered both the parties. When the shot was finished, both the vanguards joined together with such a force that it was marvell[ous] to behold. The Englishmen shot so fast, that the Frenchmen in the forward, were fain to recule to the battle where their horsemen were. The rearward of the Frenchmen, seeing this first discomfiture began to flee, but the captains retired their men together again, & the horsemen set fiercely on the Bretons, and slew the most part of the footmen. When the forward of the Bretons perceived that their horsemen nor the Almaines carne not forward they provided for themselves & fled, some here, and some there, where they thought to have refuge or succour. So that in conclusion the Frenchmen obtained the victory, & slew all such as wore red crosses, supposing them all to be Englishmen. In this conflict were slain almost all the Englishmen, & six thousand Bretons, Amongst whom were found dead the lord Woodville […].
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Molinet reports that Edward fell ‘near a wood called Selp’.
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On 20 August, the Duke of Brittany signed a treaty with France in which he acknowledged himself as its vassal. Three weeks later, he died, leaving his 12-year-old daughter, Anne, as his heir. Anne would ultimately marry Charles VIII of France.

Legend has it that only one of the numbers who had left with Edward returned to the Isle of Wight: a page named Diccon Cheke. A ballad tells his story:

            Fight on, fight on, my Island men

            Still gallant Wideville cried.

            Ah, how he fought till stricken sore

            Our Captain fell to rise no more

            Within these arms he died.

            Of all that sturdy Island band

            Who stern refused to flee,

            Knights and squires thirty and ten,

            Twenty score of stout yeomen,

            There is returned but me.
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When the Knights of the Garter met again in 1489, they would hold a requiem mass and offer the swords, helms, and crests of two fallen knights, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland (murdered during a tax revolt) and Edward Woodville. It was left for the same heralds who had recorded Edward’s presence at his one and only Garter feast to write his epitaph: ‘a noble and a courageous knight’.
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On 31 October 1489, Queen Elizabeth went into confinement to await her coming child (Margaret, born on 29 November). Normally, once a pregnant queen ‘took to her chambers’, men would be barred until the child was born, but in this case, four ambassadors from France, one of whom, Francois of Luxembourg, was related to the queen, managed to be admitted into this all-female sanctum. When the men saw the queen, she was with not only the king’s mother, but with her own mother as well.
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This rare glimpse of Elizabeth Woodville belies Bacon’s later claim that she had been ‘banished [from] the world into a nunnery; where it was almost thought dangerous to visit her or see her’.
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Clearly, she had not been shut off from all contact with her family, although the extant records furnish no clue as to how often she saw or heard from them. Elizabeth of York’s privy purse expenses, which would give us an idea as to whether messages or visits were exchanged between mother and daughter, do not survive for this period (or indeed for any other period other than the last year of the queen’s life), and heraldic accounts by their very nature were concerned only with court ceremonies, not day-to-day interactions.

But there were fewer members of the Woodville family for the dowager queen to see. With Edward’s death in battle, only one of Elizabeth’s brothers, Richard, Earl Rivers, survived. Two Woodville sisters, Jacquetta, Lady Strange, and Mary Herbert, had died some years before.
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Anne, who had married George Grey after the death of her first husband, Sir William Bourchier, died on 30 July 1489 and was buried at Warden Abbey in Bedfordshire.
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Margaret, Lady Maltravers, died some time before 6 March 1491.
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Joan, Lady Grey of Ruthin, was alive as of 24 September 1485, when Edward Woodville mentioned her as one of his heirs, but had died by 4 August 1492, when a post-mortem inquisition on her brother Richard was taken.
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