Setting the Scene
How many of us have looked at the calendar and, with a mild to significant degree of trepidation, noted that the 13th of the coming month coincided with a Friday? Even in today’s technological world, we still look on Friday 13th as potentially an unlucky occasion.2The precise origin of this superstition is uncertain; however, a strong candidate would be Friday 13 October 1307. For it was on this date that Phillippe IV, ‘the Fair,’ King of France, co-ordinated a state-wide attack on the Order of the Knights Templar. Arrests were made throughout the country and the Order’s functional presence in France was effectively obliterated that day.3 Subsequently, a number of its members were put to torture and eventual execution, while Templars throughout other parts of Europe were subject to state-sponsored oppression. The origin of the unlucky nature of Friday 13th may well have begun with this event. Whether Friday 13th was considered unlucky in 1483 is difficult to ascertain. However, a pivotal event took place that day which marked a turning point in the thread of English history.4 This day proved the culmination of a sequence of events from the immediately preceding months and years, and its effects penetrated well into the future to change the balance of power and the path of the realm’s progress. It is not an exaggeration to say that the fall of the Plantagenet dynasty and the rise of the House of Tudor was decided that day, although the actors then present on that stage could, of course, not have known this. To understand what went on that day and why, we have to probe into that past and the causes of what was, essentially, a family dispute which got out of hand.
The conundrum of presenting a larger context for any story was perhaps expressed most eloquently by P. G. Wodehouse. He observed that if the author spent too little time on the background to events, he or she would simply lose new readers who would have no idea of what was going on and abandon the text as incomprehensible. However, if the author spent too much time on the events preceding those of interest, one would bore the ‘old crew’ and thereby lose loyal readers. What is one to do? Here, I have decided to provide just a brief synopsis of such background events, since the involved reader can well go back and find several accomplished texts to fill any of the gaps I have left. Also, some of the individuals that I hope will read this work will have a much greater knowledge of this era than I, and a detailed account might well result in inadvertent errors which would perturb such scholars.
I think it is safe to say that Edward III reigned too long and had too many children.5 His fifty years on the throne from 1327–1377 meant that, like Queen Victoria and the present queen, Elizabeth II, the immediately following generation did not get a real chance to rule. As should be immediately evident, this frustration breeds unhappiness and discontent, which itself has to find expression in later years. In 1328, Edward married Phillipa of Hainault and produced a total of twelve children.6 Nine of them lived into adulthood, which was an exceptional survival rate even for royalty in those times. Of these nine survivors, five were male and essentially all that followed in the latterly named ‘Wars of the Roses’ was a glorified family argument between the descendants of these individuals, who each had some claim to the throne of England. Edward III’s first son, Edward the Black Prince, was never to become king, dying a year before his father and, it is said, thereby contributing to his father’s demise. However, the only surviving son of the Black Prince became Richard II, after Edward III’s death in 1377. Richard II was himself a ‘spare’ and only assumed primacy when his older brother died in infancy. Like many ‘spares,’ he did not make a good or strong king and was deposed by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, the son of Edward III’s third surviving son, John of Gaunt. Bolingbroke became Henry IV and took the throne, having his cousin Richard II executed early in 1400.7 It was this form of ‘might makes right’ policy that set the stage for the later events of 1483.
Upon the death of Henry IV in 1413, his son Henry V became king, and one of his major claims to fame was his extensive pursuit by means of arms of the French throne. This he accomplished, and eventually married Katherine of Valois, the French king’s daughter, thus uniting the thrones of France and England, if only for a little while. Unlike his greatgrandfather, who lived too long and had too many children, Henry V made the opposite mistake: he had too few children and died too soon. Henry V expired very close to his thirty-fifth birthday and left his infant son Henry VI on the throne of both countries. Since baby Henry was at that time only 268 days old, the country was ruled by a regent and a council. What is important to note here is that regents generally did not do as well as might be expected in these circumstances. The example of the accusation and subsequent assassination of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester for treason in 1447 was a salutary lesson that had to weigh significantly in the minds of those present in the Tower in 1483, some thirty-six years later. Being a medieval king was not for the faint-hearted, and by all accounts Henry VI would have been better suited to other more sedentary pursuits rather than being a monarch. Even after attaining his majority and having been crowned both King of England and of France, the relative power vacuum left by his own personality engendered dangerous times and conspiracy.
Due in part to Henry’s indisposition and his frequent illness, the House of York, represented primarily by Richard, Duke of York, first secured the regency and then wrested from the king the right of succession. Henry essentially disenfranchised his own son, Edward, Prince of Wales in favour of Richard, Duke of York and his descendants. As one might well imagine, this action failed signally to please Henry’s wife, Margaret of Anjou.8 However, this was just the prelude to a much more elaborate degree of family strife. When Richard, Duke of York and his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland were killed at the Battle of Wakefield late in December 1460, the gloves came off. Particularly incensed by the treatment of his father’s corpse and especially by the way in which his brother’s pleas for mercy had been ignored, Edward, the eldest living son of Richard, Duke of York, conducted an active campaign against Henry VI and his Lancastrian following. Edward won several significant victories, including the battles of Mortimer’s Cross and Towton, and was declared King Edward IV in London in 1461 with the strong support of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, latterly known as ‘the Kingmaker.’
In the following eight years, the tumblers of fate turned again several times and Edward’s army was defeated by the same Earl of Warwick at the Battle of Edgecote Moor, by which time the Kingmaker had changed sides in the hope of exerting an ever-higher level of power. After a period when Edward IV was forced to leave the country and Henry VI was restored to his throne, Edward reappeared from the Continent and began again to fight his way back to the throne.9 The Lancastrian forces were defeated first at the Battle of Barnet where Warwick the Kingmaker was killed and was followed by the decisive Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, where Edward’s victory put an end to all significant fighting for the duration of his remaining twelve-year reign. Either in the pursuit that followed the rout of the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury, or more spectacularly following the cessation of fighting, Edward, Prince of Wales, the son of Henry VI, was killed and the potential line of succession directly from Henry was broken.10 Edward IV marched to London shortly after the battle and Henry VI himself met his fate, departing this world in the Tower of London shortly after Edward returned to the capital.11 It is suggested that he died of melancholy, although the reality is most probably that it was a quite violent melancholy. In actuality, it is very likely that he was assassinated. For the time being, the House of York attained supremacy and, with no immediate claimant to champion, the House of Lancaster looked to be defeated. Of course, these were actually only family disagreements and the degree of consanguinity between the various combatants was always close. Edward IV resumed undisputed possession of the crown on Henry VI’s demise and held it for some eleven and three-quarter more years until 9 April 1483. It was on this day that the king died quite suddenly, just short of his forty-first birthday. And it is here that our story begins.