Of Virtue Rare Read online

  As soon as the news of Joan’s death reached England, Henry’s armies resumed their campaigns in France. By the end of the year they had gained enough strength to bring the king across the Channel. On Sunday morning, December 16, 1431, ten-year-old King Henry led a procession from the Palais Royal to Notre Dame, followed by a choir. At the cathedral, a long platform had been created for the coronation of the English king of France. Slowly, Henry VI mounted the steps to receive a new crown, treading reverently on a field of deep blue, painted with fleurs-de-lys of gold. The English held feasts and jousts in celebration, but the French did not share their joy.

  Though the earl of Suffolk was central in the English defeat by Joan of Arc, his reputation did not immediately suffer. He was, after all, a victim of magic, and his friends believed that once the perpetrator of the magic was dead, the English would surely rally.

  Suffolk did not return to France after Joan’s death, but remained at court as a trusted adviser and ambassador. Ten years later, however, he again brushed with alleged witchcraft, this time as judge when Eleanor Cobham, the second wife of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, was accused, along with three accomplices, of mutilating wax effigies of Henry VI in an effort to cause the king’s death. Her cohorts were Roger Bolingbroke, said to have been the most famous scholar of astrology and magic at the time; Canon Thomas Southwell, accused of blessing certain of Bolingbroke’s instruments; and one Margery Jourdemayne, who, because she resided in the manor of Eye-next-Westminster, was given the chilling sobriquet “The Witch of Eye.”

  On Sunday, July 23, 1441, Bolingbroke and his equipment were given public display. Among his instruments, besides his conjurer’s robe, were four swords with copper images of demons at their heads, and several wax images of the king. The duchess, in her defense, claimed that the wax images were used to attempt to procure her a child by her husband, Gloucester. Jourdemayne was known as a specialist in such matters and allegedly supplied the duchess with aphrodisiacs necessary to ensnare the duke in the first place.

  Despite their testimony, the four sorcerers were condemned. Bolingbroke was hanged, then drawn and quartered. Southwell died in prison. Jourdemayne was burned at Smithfield. The duchess, after serving the public penance of walking barefoot through London for three days, was imprisoned for life.

  Londoners were not sympathetic toward Eleanor Cobham, who had been Gloucester’s mistress before he abandoned his first wife to marry her. They were gratified to see this highborn lady fall so precipitously from her station, and were curious about the events that led to her shame. Much of the information they received came from the many ballads circulated among the populace. In one, “The Lament of the Duchess of Gloucester,” Eleanor supposedly tells her own tale of woe.

  “With welth, wele, and worthinesse,

  I was be-sett on every syde;

  Of glowcestre I was duchesse,

  Of all men I was magnifyed.

  As lucifer fell downe for pride,

  So I fell from felicite;

  I had no grace my-self to gwyde —

  All women may be ware by me.

  “Sum tyme I was in riche aray,

  Ther myght no princes by my pere;

  In clothys of gold and garmentys gay,

  Me thowght ther was no thyng to dere.

  I purchast fast from yere to yere,

  Of poor men I had no pite.

  Now ar my wittys all in were —

  All women may be ware by me …

  “All women that ar ware of wark,

  My mischeve may ye haf in mynd;

  To gef credence to any clerk;

  ffor so dyd I, and that I fynd

  I wrowght agayne all course of kynd,

  And lost my crede for cruelty;

  Ther may no blys my balys unbynd —

  All women may be ware by me.

  “My clerkys callyd up and downe,

  All was but mischeve that they ment;

  Owre soverayn lord and kyng with crowne

  Hym to distroye was owre entent.

  All-myghty god omnipotent,

  He wyst full well owre cruelte;

  Loo, for such marmys I am now schente —

  All women may be ware by me.”

  In the song, Eleanor is duly repentent of her “gret offence” and grateful that she was not executed along with her accomplices. It was punishment enough, she says, to have to give up all that she once enjoyed.

  “ffarewell, damaske and clothys of gold,

  ffarewell, velwette and clothys in grayne [scarlet],

  ffarewell, my clothys so manyfold,

  ffarewell, I se yow never agayne;

  ffarewell, my lord and soverayne,

  ffarewell, it may no bettyr be;

  Owre partyng is a privy payne —

  All women may be ware by me.

  “ffarewell, all mynstralcy and song,

  ffarewell, all worldly daliance,

  ffarewell, I wote I haf do wrong

  And all I wyte mysgoverance.

  Now list me nedyr prike ne prawne,

  My pride is put to poverte,

  That bothe in englond and in fraunce

  All women may be ware by me.

  “ffarewell, now, all lustinesse;

  All worldly Joy I here forsake;

  I am so full of hevynesse,

  I wot not to whom playnt to make.

  But to hym I wyll me take,

  That for us was put upon a tree,

  And in prayers wyll I wache and wake —

  All women may be ware by me.”[6]

  Though Suffolk, as one of Eleanor’s judges, caused her downfall, it was not her own fall that he hoped to effect, but that of her husband, Humphrey of Gloucester. In fact, Eleanor’s scandal engendered an atmosphere of suspicion that could not help falling on her husband, and thereby could not help putting Suffolk in a favorable light.

  Gloucester had been regent of England for more than twenty years during the long minority of his nephew Henry VI. He had no lack of political enemies; chief among them was Margaret Beaufort’s great-uncle Henry Beaufort. Bishop of Winchester since 1406, Henry Beaufort wanted to be pope. Failing that, he aspired to be a cardinal and almost succeeded. He struck up a friendship with Pope Martin V, who offered him the cardinal’s hat, but Beaufort’s king, Henry V, was adamantly opposed. Beaufort bought influence in government through his indispensable and seemingly bottomless purse. As cardinal, thought the king, he would be uncontrollable. Henry V threatened to rescind Beaufort’s bishopric and confiscate all his worldly goods if he dared accept the honor. For once, Beaufort was forced to submit. It may have been the only time.

  As chancellor of England, Beaufort would not be cowed by Gloucester, and their enmity was notorious throughout London. Once the archbishop of Canterbury rode eight times between the two to settle a dispute. Throughout the reign of Henry V and well into the reign of his son, Beaufort and Gloucester kept up their noisy public disputes. Finally Beaufort, annoyed at a compromise he was induced to make with his rival, resigned as chancellor of England and sought power in the position he had long coveted: “The Habite, Hatte and dignitie of a Cardinall.”[7]

  In 1447, Gloucester and Beaufort were still rivals, this time over the conduct of the war with France. Beaufort and his party were calling for peace, even if it meant surrender of English-held land. Gloucester wanted to continue the war. The factions were irreparably divided, and Gloucester, for his strong views, was accused of treason and arrested to await trial. The morning after his arrest he was found dead. He appeared to have suffered “a palsey … but all indifferent persons well knewe, that he died of no natural death but of some violent force: some judged hym to be strangled: some affirme, that a hote spitte was put in at his foundement: others write, that he was stiff elcd or smoldered betwene twoo fetherbeddes …”[8] It appears, however, that the “palsey” was in fact a stroke, brought on in the fifty-six-year-old man by the shock of his sudden arrest and accusation.

 
Gloucester, too, was the subject of a “Lament” that shows the sympathy he evoked among many Englishmen.

  Compleyne al yngland this goode lordis deth,

  ffor and ye considre youre causes ben right grete,

  He hath with his wisdom, while hym lasted breth,

  And with his richesse made the grete gete

  Of oure enemys to kele, wold they werre or trete;

  But ageyn mortalite there lith no recure;

  Now lord, syn no nother remedye may be gete,

  Have mercy on hym beryed in this sepulure.[9]

  Some saw him as Beaufort’s victim, fallen at last to the ruthless cardinal. But Beaufort’s triumph was short-lived. Two months later, he too was dead.

  There was little mourning for Henry Beaufort. As Edward Hall wrote in his obituary, the cardinal was “more noble of blodd than notable in learning; haut in stomacke [strong in courage] and hygh in countenaunce; ryche above mesure of all men, & to fewe liberal; disdaynfull to his kynne and dreadfull to his lovers; preferrynge money before frendshippe; many things beginning and nothing performing. His covertise insaviable, and hope of long lyfe, made hym both to forget God, his Prynce, and hym selfe, in his latter daies.” John Baker, his private chaplain, remembered that on his deathbed Beaufort asked: “Why should I dye, having so much ryches [that] if the whole Real me would save my lyfe, I am either by pollicie to get it, or by ryches to bye it? Fye, will not death be hyred, nor will money do nothyng? when my nephew of Bedford died, I thought my selfe halfe up the whele, but when I saw myne other nephew of Gloucester disceased, then I thought my self able to be equale with kinges, and so thought to encrease my treasure in hoope to have worne a tryple Croune. But I se now the worlde faileth me, and so I am deceyved …”[10]

  In 1447 two men rose to take the place of Beaufort and Gloucester as rivals to each other and for the ear of the king. One was the new heir presumptive to the throne, Richard Plantagenet, duke of York. The other was Henry VI’s trusted aide, William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk.

  In the 1440s, as Henry’s ambassador and as a proponent of the Beaufort peace party, Suffolk was entrusted with arranging a diplomatic truce that would end the war. As Henry had long proposed, the truce would be strengthened by a marriage. It was Suffolk’s dream to see the marriage accomplished between his king and Margaret of Anjou.

  Margaret was very beautiful. It was said that Henry, on receiving her portrait from France, was immediately taken by her lovely features and glowing youth. Her beauty, however, was of no real importance, nor was her lack of dowry from her then-impoverished father. Henry had to pawn all the crown jewels and household plate for Margaret’s trousseau and the articles necessary for the coronation. He presented her with a gold and ruby ring, but even this was not his own. Given to him by his uncle, it was, ominously, the ring Henry had worn at his coronation in Paris at the age of ten, following the execution of Joan of Arc. All that was important to the king at this time, however, was the proposed two-year truce.

  *

  In May, Suffolk stood as Henry’s proxy at the betrothal in Anjou and was greeted with acclaim by his welcoming countrymen when he returned to England. But in October 1444, when he arrived in France with his wife to escort Margaret to her new home, he found that additional concessions were demanded. He must agree to surrender Maine and Anjou, or there would be no marriage and no peace. The decision was a wrenching one for Suffolk, but he believed that both the king and the Beaufort faction would back him, and he agreed. In 1425, England had held half of France. With the new agreements, they would lose almost everything.

  There was open approval of Suffolk’s actions when the duke returned to London, and the king was duly grateful. But at Bletsoe, visitors were less than content with Suffolk’s decision and wondered at the motives behind it. At first the talk was quiet and speculative, but gradually feelings became more belligerent. Margaret Beauchamp was concerned, not only for the future of England, but, on a personal level, for the future of her daughter. Young Margaret’s fate had been placed in the hands of this powerful magnate, once the confidant of the king but now, five years later, a man fallen into disgrace. By 1450, Suffolk’s popularity had plummeted so deeply that he was seen by some as the sole cause of England’s downfall in France.

  II - A Mervaylous Thyng

  IN 1450, at nine years of age, Margaret was made more aware than ever of the uncertainty of fortune, the brevity of fame. Margaret knew that her mother was worried about Suffolk’s influence on her life. She had heard rumors that she would soon be betrothed to either of two candidates: John de la Pole, Suffolk’s seven-year-old son, or Edmund Tudor, the earl of Richmond, half brother to the king, nineteen and a soldier for the crown.

  Edmund was born from the union of the widow of Henry V, Catherine, and a certain charming, handsome young Welsh squire whom Catherine had appointed clerk of her wardrobe. Owen Tudor came from an important family in Anglesey; his ancestors were depicted in the stained glass of a church in Penmynydd. He had fought heroically at Henry V’s side. What attracted Catherine to him was not his skill as a soldier, not his ancestry, but his lively dancing at a court fete and his striking good looks.

  It was a crime for Welsh and English to intermarry; in 1427, it was declared illegal, by an act of Parliament, for the queen dowager to marry anyone without permission of the king’s advisers. Nevertheless, by 1430 Owen Tudor and Catherine were married. Despite the obvious risks, they had three sons and two daughters. Catherine might have been able to hide her marriage if she had not been so frequently pregnant, but the king’s counselors could not permit such blatant disregard for their authority.

  In 1436 the Tudor children were taken from their mother, and the queen herself was retired to Bermondsey Abbey. Owen was imprisoned at Newgate, where he eventually charmed a servant and enlisted the aid of a priest to escape. When Catherine died in January

  1437, possibly as much from a rapid succession of pregnancies as from her persecution, Owen’s fate became even more precarious. Again he was captured and again he escaped, this time to Wales, where he was apparently ignored until 1439, when the king granted his stepfather full pardon.

  The Tudor children did not suffer for their parents’ indiscretion. They were placed with high-ranking guardians, and two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were valued members of the king’s retinue. It was rumored that Henry VI himself preferred Edmund Tudor as a husband for Margaret.

  The descendants of Edward III had intermarried and procreated to evolve a complicated family tree. The family of the eldest son had long since died out, but the second son, Lionel, duke of Clarence, had had a larger family, who intermarried with other nobility. His great-granddaughter Anne Mortimer had married Lionel’s nephew, the son of his brother Edmund, duke of York. Her sons, therefore, would inherit the York title.

  The third son, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, also begat a large family, both legitimate and, until declared legitimate by Parliament, bastards. Henry VI was the last survivor of Gaunt’s marriage, but Henry had no children. Unless he produced an heir, the children of Gaunt’s mistress, the Beauforts, would carry on the Lancastrian title. With the death of the eldest, John Beaufort, the line was now carried only by Gaunt’s granddaughter Margaret.

  For many in 1450 the question of inheritance of the crown was not a pressing issue. For Suffolk, however, the question was vital. As a staunch Lancastrian, unwilling to consider the claims of the family of York, he believed that there was only one real heiress. Margaret Beaufort was a potential queen, and if his ward did not claim the crown for herself, she must pass that glorious inheritance to her son.

  Suffolk’s striving for power had won him great acclaim, but it also proved to be his downfall. Legally, Margaret’s fate was still in the hands of William de la Pole. In February 1450, he managed to betroth his son to the Beaufort heiress. The action angered many. Margaret, after all, was no ordinary heiress, and John de la Pole was the son of a man damned by the court. Early in 1450, when public op
inion was greatly against him, Suffolk was indicted for several alleged acts of treason. Foremost among them was the accusation that he tried to secure the throne for his son by forcing the marriage with Margaret Beaufort, “presumyng and pretendyng her to be next inheritable to the corone …”

  An anonymous poem, “Advice to the Court,” warned the king against the villain.

  Suffolk normandy hath swold,

  to get hyt a-guyn he is bold.

  Be ware, kyng henre, how thou doos;

  Let no lenger thy traitours do loos —

  they will never be trewe.

  The traytours are sworn all to-gedere

  To holde fast as they were brether;

  Let hem drynk as they han brewed.[11]

  Suffolk denied his charges, and King Henry, despite the advice of much of the nobility, declared that Suffolk was still “in the kyng’s gode grase.” But the impeachment created an atmosphere so volatile that Suffolk’s presence could not be abided in England. He was exiled for five years. On April 30, 1450, he set out for Dover to sail across the Channel for Calais.

  Before he sailed, William de la Pole wrote a farewell letter to his young son:

  I both charge you, and pray you to … pass all the great tempests and troubles of this wretched world.

  And that also … ye do nothing for love nor dread of any earthly creature that should displease him … Secondly … to be true liegeman in heart, in will, in thought, in deed, unto the king our alder most high and dread sovereign lord, to whom both ye and I be so much bound to …

  He asked his son to obey his mother; to avoid “proud,” “covetous,” or “flattering” men; to seek wise counsel.

  And last of all, as heartily and as lovingly as ever father blessed his child in earth, I give you the blessing of Our Lord and of me, which of his infinite mercy increase you in all virtue and good living; and that your blood may by his grace from kindred to kindred multiply in this earth to his service, in such wise as after the departing from this wretched world here, ye and they may glorify him eternally among his angels in heaven.[12]