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ANCESTORS

AMONG HENRY’S EARLIEST MEMORIES were stories of his own turbulent family history. Some probably came from the horse’s mouth of his parents and relations, and especially his mother; others formed a staple of the teaching of his first boyhood tutor, the poet John Skelton.

Henry, Skelton reminded him in the written materials he prepared for his pupil’s instruction, was of ‘noble’ – that is, royal – blood on his mother’s side as much as his father’s. This was unusual. But then so was the whole of Henry’s family story. For not only were his parents both royal; they both had a claim to the throne. Henry’s mother, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward IV, was heiress of the house of York; his father, Henry VII was, much more remotely, heir of the house of Lancaster. And the two claims, of course, were incompatible.

* * *

For the last few decades, their – and Henry’s – ancestors had struggled for possession of the crown in a conflict known, after their respective emblems – the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York – as ‘The Wars of the Roses’. Four kings, two princes and a dozen royal dukes had met violent deaths; others, of similar status, had been imprisoned, dispossessed or driven into exile. As well, there were the women who mourned their menfolk, or, at great risk to themselves, plotted and schemed on their behalf. All were Henry’s relations: his father, mother, uncles, grandfather, grandmothers, great-grandfather and cousins innumerable.

And if present comfort and prosperity tempted him to forget, men like Skelton were on hand to remind him. ‘Although you are of a famous family, nonetheless remember,’ he admonished the boy, ‘that ruin and exile are no more impossible for you than similar fates were for your fathers.’ He then listed the perils of sovereignty in a series of crashing rhymes: vulnera funerea miserabilia, suspecta tempora formidabilia, occulta odia instimabilia … miserable deadly injury, formidable uncertain times, inestimable hidden hatreds’.1

There must have been moments when Henry felt that his tutor had come near to rubbing his nose in it.

Now, of course, the victory of Henry’s father at Bosworth and the subsequent marriage of his parents was supposed to put an end to all this. But passions were too entrenched for there to be any such swift and easy conclusion. Instead the aftershocks continued through Henry’s childhood and youth, and provided the other great theme in his upbringing.

They determined the why and when of his entry into public life, of the offices he held and the titles he bore. They shaped his extended family and with it his own developing sense of identity and political affiliation. They even helped him choose between his parents: he would incline to his mother rather than to his father and, as a young man at least, preferred York to Lancaster.

It was a rebalancing which, more than anything else, would allow the union of York and Lancaster – sketched only imperfectly under his fiercely partisan father – finally to flourish and become a reality.

Henry’s father and mother were a striking couple on their wedding day on 18 January 1486. Aged nineteen going on twenty, Elizabeth of York was one of the beauties of the age: tall, statuesque, with blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin and pure, regular features. She was singularly attractive as a character too, and in a royal family of strident and assertive personalities, she was a healer and reconciler. King Henry VII, though nine years older, was in the prime of life. He too was well above average height, slim, even spare, but strong and with a full head of brown hair, worn rather long, a brilliant eye and a mobile, expressive face. He had also just shown many of the key qualities of kingship: bravery, decisiveness and the ability to master men and events.

Above all, he had had luck. And he had had it time and time again.

* * *

For really nothing was less likely than that this homeless, penniless, long-exiled adventurer, of dubious blood on both sides, more Welsh than English and more French than either, should become heir of Lancaster, king of England and marry the heiress of York.

Henry Tudor was lucky, in the first place, even to have survived the dire circumstances of his birth. This took place on 28 January 1457 at Pembroke Castle on the extreme south-west coast of Wales. His father, Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, had died of the plague three months earlier. His mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, was only thirteen and had taken refuge with her brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke. With her youth and diminutive stature, the birth was evidently a difficult one. At any rate, despite two further marriages, she would have no other children. And it was the depths of winter and the plague still raged.

But, out of these dreadful experiences, the closest bond was forged between Margaret and her only child. Even decades later, their correspondence reads more like the letters of two lovers than of mother and son.

Both of Henry Tudor’s parents belonged to satellite families of the house of Lancaster. His father was the issue of a scandalous (and dangerous) liaison between the queen dowager, Catherine of France, mother of Henry VI and widow of Henry V, and a handsome young Welsh squire of her household, Owen Tudor. His mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, descended from John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster’s equally scandalous relationship with his long-term mistress and eventual third wife, Catherine Swynford. Their many children were legitimated; given the surname Beaufort and promoted first to the earldom and later the dukedom of Somerset.

But they were deliberately excluded from the succession.

Fifty years later, however, their cousin, Henry VI, was having second thoughts. Henry VI was the third king of the house of Lancaster. In 1399, Henry ‘of Bolingbroke’, eldest son of Duke John of Gaunt by his first marriage to Blanche of Lancaster, had dethroned his childless cousin, Richard II and made himself king as Henry IV. Henry IV’s reputation never recovered from the taint of the usurpation and subsequent murder of Richard II. But he did manage to hang on to the throne.

Any remaining doubts about Lancastrian legitimacy were swept aside under his son, Henry V. Henry V was the greatest general to have sat on the throne of England, and arguably her greatest king. He won a second kingdom by his victories in France, compelling the French king to give him his daughter, Catherine, in marriage and recognize him as heir to his kingdom.

Our Henry rejoiced to bear the name of his all-conquering predecessor. Almost a century later, tales of Henry V’s exploits, passed on by his mother’s aged lord chamberlain, filled his ears as a boy and gave him his ideal of kingship: he too, he resolved, would conquer France and make the name of the king of England the most feared in Europe.

France, alas, eluded him; feared, however, he became indeed – for reasons good and bad.

At his moment of triumph, Henry V died, leaving as heir to both his kingdoms a six-month-old son, Henry VI. Henry VI turned out to be utterly unworthy of his inheritance: he was peace-loving, morbidly religious, and inherited a streak of madness from his French grandfather, Charles VI. Despite eight years of marriage to Queen Margaret of Anjou, he had even failed to produce an heir.

This left the house of Lancaster dangerously exposed, since none of Henry VI’s uncles had had legitimate children either. In these circumstances, he had decided to bolster the dynasty by brokering the marriage between his cousin Margaret Beaufort and his half-brother, Edmund Tudor.

Was Henry VI really thinking of establishing a strengthened junior branch of the royal line? It is possible. Of course Edmund – despite his close relationship to the king – had no English royal blood at all, and Margaret’s was tainted. But – in the absence of anything better – their offspring might be half-plausible Lancastrian heirs in the event of the failure of the senior line.

The arrangements for the marriage were completed in March 1453. By then, it transpired, Margaret of Anjou was already pregnant with the longed-for prince of Wales, Edward, who was born on 13 October 1453. But that did not save his father. Henry VI had already lost most of France; now his incompetence and occasional madness were threatening to cost him England as well. Leader of his increasingly disloyal opposition was Richard, duke of York.

Richard descended twice over from Edward III. Edward III, as he rather smugly informed parliament in 1362, had been blessed ‘in many ways and especially in the engendering of sons who are come to manhood’.2 There were five of them in all. Edward III endowed them with vast estates and borrowed the quasi-royal title of ‘duke’ from France to distinguish them from the rest of the nobility. Through his father, Duke Richard sprang from Edward III’s fourth son, Edmund, duke of York. But through his mother he descended from his second son, Lionel, duke of Clarence. This, since the Lancastrian kings only descended from Edward III’s third son, John of Gaunt, arguably gave him a better title to the throne than Henry VI himself.

And argue it Duke Richard did. From about 1448 he adopted the royal surname ‘Plantagenet’, and in 1460 he claimed the throne itself.3 Six months later, however, he was dead and his severed head – derisively crowned with a paper crown – was displayed over the gates of York.

But Duke Richard’s son, Edward, earl of March, succeeded where his father had failed. He dethroned and imprisoned Henry VI in 1461 and, reigning as Edward IV, made himself first king of the house of York.

Edward IV, who was only eighteen when he won the throne in battle, was a natural leader of men. He was six feet three inches tall and broad in proportion, with reddish-brown hair, a pink-and-white complexion and a broad, handsome, albeit flattish face. He was charming, too, especially to women, who found him irresistible. But the sunny mood could turn without warning to terrifying violence: he even, the all-too-plausible story goes, held a knife to the woman who would become his queen. He was a great builder, lived luxuriously and maintained a magnificent court as a matter of both policy and personal preference. This lover of life also loved his food, and he became grossly fat in his declining years.

No one, in short, since Edward III had looked or behaved more like a king. And no one looked more like his future grandson, Henry VIII.

He even married for love.

His bride was a young widow, Elizabeth Woodville, whom he wed secretly in 1464, after a whirlwind courtship. She was bold, beautiful and came from famously fertile stock. Eighteen months later she presented Edward IV with a daughter, who was named Elizabeth after her mother and would become our Henry’s mother in turn. Two more daughters followed.

But the marriage was controversial from the start. Elizabeth Woodville, as a subject and a widow, was wholly unsuitable as a royal bride. And she was personally contentious as well. Arrogant, low-born and grasping – with eleven brothers and sisters to provide for as well as the two sons of her first marriage – she went out of her way to alienate powerful Yorkist supporters, including the king’s mother and brothers.

The result was that in 1470, affronted Yorkists joined with renegade Lancastrians to drive Edward IV into exile and restore Henry VI to the throne.

The ‘readeption’ of Henry VI, as it was known, turned the world upside down – not least for our Henry’s future parents. For his father, Henry Tudor, then in his early teens, it meant a return to quasi-royal status. Back in 1461, with his powerful Lancastrian connexions, he had been part of the spoils of Yorkist victory, and had been made the ward of the Herbert family of Raglan Castle. They were the Tudors’ Yorkist rivals in south Wales. But, paradoxically, his years at Raglan Castle were the most stable of Henry Tudor’s youth: the Herberts looked after him well, brought him up carefully and intended him to become their son-in-law as husband of their eldest daughter.

But, as the Yorkist following started to splinter in the late 1460s, Henry Tudor’s guardian was among the first to be killed in the struggle. The boy was rescued by his uncle, Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, who escorted him to London to have an audience with his other uncle, the restored King Henry VI. The audience took place on 27 October 1470. And it was then, if later Tudor accounts are to be believed, that Henry VI prophesied that ‘This … is he unto whom both we and our adversaries must yield and give over the dominion.’4

* * *

For Henry’s future mother, on the other hand, the ‘readeption’ spelt humiliation and disaster. Probably, as she was then aged four, it was among her earliest memories. She had been with her mother, Elizabeth Woodville, and two younger sisters in the Tower of London, where the queen was getting ready for the elaborate ceremonies of her fourth confinement. But on 1 October 1470 news came of her father’s flight into exile. Immediately, vicious rioting broke out, and not even the Tower seemed safe. That night, the queen, with Elizabeth and her two sisters, ‘secretly’ took boat to Westminster ‘and there registered her and such as her belonged as sanctuary folk’.

Elizabeth and her mother had begun the day as queen and princess of England; they ended it as refugees. But as York sank, Lancaster rose. On 3 October, Henry VI was released from his prison, where he had not been ‘so cleanly kept as should seem such a prince’, and was ceremoniously conducted to ‘the king’s lodgings where the queen before lay’.5

No doubt he slept in her very bed.

Meanwhile, in the sanctuary, Elizabeth and her mother found themselves dependent on the charity of friends and foes alike. A London butcher, William Gould, gave them out of ‘great kindness and true heart’ the carcasses of half a cow and two sheep to feed their household each week; Thomas Millyng, the abbot of Westminster, went out of his way to befriend them; even Henry VI’s government provided (and paid for) the services of Elizabeth, Lady Scrope of Bolton, as the queen’s lady-in-waiting.6

A month later, on 2 November, Elizabeth Woodville was safely delivered of a son. Her own doctor and midwife were in attendance. But, since she was a mere ex-queen, there was no ceremony. There was ‘little pomp’ either when the child was christened in the Abbey, with Millyng and the prior as godfathers and Lady Scrope as godmother.7

Nevertheless, he was named ‘Edward’ after his father – and in the hope of better times.

And the good times soon returned. Only two years earlier, in July 1468, Edward IV’s sister Margaret had married Charles the Bold, the most magnificent and ostentatious ruler of the day. As duke of Burgundy, Charles was a prince of the blood royal of France. But his real power came from his control of the Netherlands, a patchwork of cities and territories which included not only the modern Netherlands, but also present-day Belgium and much of north-eastern France. It was the richest area of Europe outside Italy, and was England’s principal trading partner.

Here Edward IV found refuge in his exile. Nevertheless, despite their close relationship, Charles’s initial welcome was cool. It became much warmer in December 1470 when Louis XI of France, the ally and patron of the new Lancastrian regime, declared war on Charles. Duke Charles riposted by agreeing to support Edward IV in a bid to recover England.

Things were going Edward IV’s way in England as well. Henry VI ‘readepted’ was no more effectual than he had been the first time round. And the unholy alliance of Yorkists and Lancastrians that had restored him was coming apart. The result was that when Edward IV landed in Yorkshire in March 1471 his invasion soon turned into a promenade. As he marched south, troops flocked to join his little army of 1,500 men and he entered London unopposed.

Once again, it was all change, as Henry’s grandfather confronted his great-uncle. Edward IV took the surrender of Henry VI, unkinged him for a second time and sent him back to his prison in the Tower. Then he went to Westminster to liberate his queen and children from the sanctuary. Elizabeth Woodville’s first gesture was to present him with his first-born son Edward – the son he had never seen – ‘to the king’s greatest joy … [and] his heart’s singular comfort and gladness’.8

Elizabeth, for her part, probably never forgot that moment either.

It was the eve of Easter, and Edward IV’s enemies expected him to pause for the court’s customary elaborate devotions. Instead, he took them off-guard and defeated both groups in turn: the ex-Yorkists at Barnet and the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury.

This time, he decided, there would be no survivors. The Lancastrian prince of Wales and the last Beaufort duke of Somerset were killed in the battle, and Henry VI himself was done to death in the Tower with a heavy blow to the back of the head. No one, a Yorkist chronicler exulted, of ‘the stock of Lancaster remained among the living’ who could claim the throne.

No one, that is, apart from Henry’s father, Henry Tudor.

He and his uncle Jasper, earl of Pembroke, were in south Wales at the time of Tewkesbury. In the wake of the disaster, they retreated first to Pembroke Castle and then, in late September 1471, took ship from Tenby. It would be fourteen years before Henry Tudor saw either England or his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, again.

Jasper and Henry Tudor had intended to seek refuge in France. Instead, autumn storms drove them ashore in Brittany. Brittany was the last of the great French duchies to retain its virtual independence from the kingdom of France. King Louis XI, ‘the Spider’, was determined to end its autonomy; Duke Francis II was equally resolved to keep it. To do so involved a careful balancing act between the three great powers bordering the Channel: England, France and Burgundy.

Henry Tudor was a useful counter in the game – too useful for the duke ever to give him up entirely.

There were narrow scrapes, however, as in 1476 when Duke Francis was bullied into agreeing to surrender him to Edward IV. But once again his luck held, and illness – real or feigned – provided sufficient breathing space for Henry Tudor to escape into sanctuary and Duke Francis to countermand his decision. The crisis over, Jasper and his nephew returned to live at the ducal court, as part-prisoners, part-honoured guests, and wholly dependent on the whim of their host and the shifting balance of power among his nobles and councillors.

Though it might not have seemed so at the time, this too was valuable training. Here Henry Tudor grew up, polished his French and, above all, learned the ways of courts and men. He became reserved, self-reliant, watchful, suspicious of the motives of others, and trusting – if he fully trusted anybody – only the handful of those who had shared the risks and sacrifices of exile with him.

These were admirable qualities for winning a throne. It was less clear how useful they would be in keeping one.

With the virtual destruction of the house of Lancaster, Edward IV’s second reign was much smoother than his first. His family continued to grow, with the birth of a second son, Richard, duke of York, and three more daughters. He became steadily richer. And the execution in 1478 of his restless and insatiably ambitious brother, George, duke of Clarence, seemed to remove the last remaining threat to the dynasty.

But then disaster struck. At Easter 1483 Edward IV went on an angling trip on the Thames and caught a chill. Ten days later he was dead. He was succeeded by his son and heir, Edward V. Edward V was a bright and promising boy. But at thirteen he was at least three years short of his majority.

* * *

The impending royal minority tore apart the smooth façade of Yorkist England. For who should have the regency: the queen mother, Elizabeth Woodville? Or Edward IV’s youngest and only surviving brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester? Both feared and mistrusted each other. Gloucester struck first. He intercepted the boy-king on his journey to London, arrested his Woodville guardians, who were despatched for eventual execution, and lodged Edward V in the Tower.

Possession of the king was nine-tenths of power in late medieval England, and on the back of it Richard had himself proclaimed lord protector or regent. But he could not go further without control as well of Edward V’s younger brother and his own namesake, Richard, duke of York.

Once again, as in 1470, Elizabeth Woodville sought sanctuary at Westminster with her remaining children. Then Elizabeth of York had been a little girl of four; now she was a young woman of seventeen. Then, too, the rights of sanctuary had been respected even by Edward IV’s worst enemies of the house of Lancaster. Not so in 1483 by his brother Richard, duke of Gloucester. Instead, Gloucester used moral blackmail and the threat of real force to compel the queen mother to surrender her second son. Prince Richard was immediately sent to join his elder brother, Edward V, in the Tower. With both boys in his clutches, Gloucester’s way to the throne was clear.

He was crowned as Richard III on 6 July with the materials that had been prepared for his nephew, Edward V’s coronation.

For Elizabeth of York, the handover of her little brother Richard was probably even more distressing than Gloucester’s previous detention of Edward V. As the eldest son, Edward had been escorted by his parents at the age of only three to Ludlow Castle in the Marches of Wales, there to be put through a rigorous programme of literary, political and religious education to fit him for the throne. He was given his own household and council, and formal ‘ordinances’ or regulations were issued which spelled out the arrangements for his upbringing in minute detail.

Thereafter, brother and sister met only on the rare occasions that Edward came to court.

Richard, in contrast, had been part of Elizabeth of York’s life from the moment of his birth in August 1473. As the second son, he had remained at home with his mother and his sisters. And he had been the liveliest and most attractive of brothers. Years later, a foreign visitor recalled seeing the family together, with Richard at its heart: ‘He was, the visitor remembered, a very noble little boy and that he had seen him singing with his mother and one of his sisters and that he sang very well. He was also, the visitor added, very pretty and the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.’9