EDWARD IV MAY have been a licentious man, but his court was decorous and ceremonious. From the beginning his aim was to emulate Burgundy, whose court was then the model for Europe. Thereafter, for several decades, Burgundian influence was to be detected in all aspects of court life.
Visually, Edward’s court was magnificent – a Bohemian visitor, Gabriel Tetzel, described it in 1466 as ‘the most splendid court that could be found in all Christendom’. The King favoured and refurbished the palaces of the Thames Valley – Westminster, the Tower, Greenwich, Sheen, Eltham and Windsor. In all of these he made extravagant improvements, patronising architects, stonemasons, sculptors, glaziers, silversmiths, goldsmiths, jewellers and merchants dealing in luxury goods such as tapestries and fabrics. Hence the royal palaces were supplied with everything ‘in such costly measure’, says Tetzel, ‘that it is unbelievable that it could be provided’. Rich cloth of Arras adorned the walls, the tables were set with fine napery and gold, silver and gilt plate, chairs and cushions were upholstered in velvet and damask, beds covered with sheets of fine holland cloth and counterpanes of crimson damask or cloth of gold trimmed with ermine. In summer there were elaborate picnics by the river, with tables set up in the gardens under the trees; courtiers could shade themselves in silken tents, and watch the King and his guests glide past along the river in gilded barges: from these issued the music for which Edward’s court was renowned. Croyland tells us that the court presented ‘no other appearance than such as fully befits a most mighty kingdom filled with riches’.
Court etiquette was very formal and a strict code of courtesy prevailed. Banquets could last three hours and more, and on one occasion the Queen kept her ladies on their knees throughout while she and her guests ate in silence. Even her own mother had to stand until the Queen had been served the first course. On state occasions, and at the Christmas and Easter courts, the King and Queen always appeared wearing their crowns.
All of this had to be paid for. Although the expenses of his court were actually less in real terms than those of any previous mediaeval English monarch, Edward IV borrowed thousands of pounds from financiers of the City of London and Italian merchant bankers, and pawned some jewels, but in the end stringent economies had to be enforced. These were laid down in the Black Book of the Household in 1471–2 and made Edward rather unpopular, for from thenceforth household supplies such as wood for fires, torches, candles, rushes for floors, straw for mattresses, food, wine and ale were rationed, the duties of servants strictly delineated, and restrictions placed on the number of servants a nobleman might bring to court: a duke was allowed twelve, a baron only four.
By the early 1470s Edward IV was already carrying out the duties of kingship in a suitably magnificent setting. He was well aware of the political value of lavish display, but during the latter years of his reign there were fewer extravagant ceremonies at court and in public.
The King’s needs were looked after by the officers of the royal household, which was at the core of the court, but many of these posts were sinecures held by the great magnates and delegated to lesser mortals. Then there were in attendance the royal councillors, the civil servants, the domestic servants, visiting nobles, foreign ambassadors and visitors, the ladies and officers of the Queen’s household, and a whole army of petitioners seeking favours from the King. The purchasing and purveying of influence, grace and favour were the main business of the court. Thus ambitious magnates battled for supremacy in an atmosphere charged with vicious competitiveness and ruthless ambition.
At the centre of this circle of patronage was the King, to whom all sought access. This was usually granted only after receipt of a written request. The King was seen as the fount of all honours and benefits, but Edward was shrewd and only rewarded those who were prepared to serve him well; there were few time-servers at his court. To his credit, he did not allow his many mistresses any political power, nor did he advance his bastards, but he had promoted and favoured the Wydvilles and in the eyes of many that was thought just as bad, especially since, in the years after 1471, their influence was extended to encompass the heir to the throne.
In June 1471, Elizabeth Darcy was appointed Lady Mistress of the newly-created Prince of Wales’ nursery, and A vice Welles was given the post of nurse. On 3rd July, the King commanded his chief magnates to swear an oath of allegiance to the Prince as ‘the very undoubted son and heir of our sovereign lord’. Forty-seven lords gave their oath, foremost amongst them being the Dukes of Clarence, Gloucester and Buckingham. Five days later the King issued Letters Patent appointing a council that would be responsible for the administration of his son’s household and estates until he reached the age of fourteen, his expected majority. Its members comprised the Queen, Clarence, Gloucester and a panel of bishops. Sir Thomas Vaughan was given the office of Prince’s Chamberlain; his duty was to walk behind the King, carrying the young Edward in his arms, on ceremonial occasions. Vaughan would remain with Edward for most of his life, offering him dedicated service, and it appears that his charge became very close to him.
In 1473, when he was three, the Prince of Wales’ household was permanently established at Ludlow Castle on the Welsh Marches. On 23rd September that year a series of ordinances governing the Prince’s upbringing and education were drawn up. Although the régime was rather strict for so young a child, these ordinances reveal the tender love felt by the King for his son, and in some respects they show an enlightened approach to child-rearing. The Prince was to rise each morning ‘at a convenient hour according to his age’, and attend Matins and mass before breakfast. Before dinner he was to be instructed ‘in such virtuous learning as his age shall suffer to receive’. This included listening to ‘such noble stories as behoveth a prince to understand and know’. Afternoons were to be spent in physical activity and the acquiring of the knightly arts such as horsemanship, swordsmanship, tossing the quintain and ‘such convenient disports and exercises as behoveth his estate to have experience in’. After Vespers and supper, the Prince was allowed some time for play, when he could indulge in ‘such honest disports as shall be conveniently devised for his recreation’. Until he was twelve, he was sent to bed at 8.00 pm; from 1482, he was allowed to stay up until 9.00 pm. His tutors and servants were sensibly exhorted ‘to enforce themselves to make him merry and joyous towards his bed’, and once he was asleep a watch was kept over him throughout the night in case sudden illness carry off ‘God’s precious sending and gift’ and the King’s ‘most desired treasure’. No ‘swearer, brawler, backbiter, common hazarder or adulterer’ was ever to be allowed into the household; Edward IV was taking no chances.
On 10th November, 1473, the Prince’s maternal uncle, Anthony Wydville, Earl Rivers, then aged thirty-one, was appointed his Governor, a post which made him effective ruler of Wales; Rivers was also preferred to the Prince’s newly-formed Council, commissioned in the names of Edward and his mother to govern and restore order to the Welsh Marches on behalf of the King. The Council was nominally accountable to the Prince, but the man with real power was its Lord President, John Alcock, Bishop of Worcester (later Bishop of Ely), who had served briefly as Lord Chancellor of England in 1475 and was a founder of Jesus College, Cambridge. Alcock had also been given responsibility for the Prince’s education, and tutored him personally. The faithful Sir Thomas Vaughan was appointed Treasurer to the Prince, and continued to care for the child’s daily needs, there being no women at Ludlow. Edward’s half-brother, Sir Richard Grey, was also on his Council, as was his mother’s relative, Sir Richard Haute.
For the next ten years, says Mancini, the growing Prince lived at Ludlow, and ‘devoted himself to horses and dogs and other useful exercises to invigorate his body’. The castle was his chief residence, but he spent time also at the manor of Tickenhill at Bewdley, which his father had had prepared as a kind of holiday retreat for him. He was exceptionally lucky in his governor and uncle, who was not only as powerful a figure in the Welsh Marches as Gloucester was in the north, but also, states Mancini, ‘a kindly, serious and just man, and one tested by every vicissitude of life. Whatever his prosperity, he had injured nobody, though benefiting many, and therefore he had entrusted to him the care and direction of the King’s son.’ Rivers and his late father, reported the Milanese ambassador, were ‘men of very great valour’. More thought Rivers to be a man of honour. To his contemporaries, he was indeed the very mirror of Chaucer’s ‘parfait, gentil knight’ – brave, chivalrous, cultivated, elegant, charming, pious and well-educated, and his feats in the jousting lists were renowned.
Rivers was a very religious man, even an ascetic one, for he wore a hair shirt beneath his rich robes. During his early years at Ludlow he translated three devotional works from Latin to French; this work, entitled The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, was in 1476 the first book to be printed in England by William Caxton, whose patron Rivers was. Rivers’ piety also led him to write poetry about the seven deadly sins, and to go on several pilgrimages abroad. He had travelled all over Europe, visiting several Italian cities including Rome, and the shrine of St James of Compostella in Spain; Pope Sixtus IV had been sufficiently impressed by him to appoint him Defender and Director of Papal Causes in England.
Rivers added to these talents his abilities as a military and naval commander and as a diplomat. But he was first and foremost a Wydville, loyal to his sister and her faction, and his appointment as Governor of the Prince, together with the careful selection of the members of the Council of the Marches, meant that young Edward would grow to maturity firmly under Wydville control, influenced by his mother’s supporters throughout his formative years. As More commented, ‘In effect, everyone as he was nearest of kin unto the Queen, so was planted next about the prince, whereby her blood might of youth be rooted in the Prince’s favour.’ And that is exactly what happened.
On 17th August, 1473, Queen Elizabeth bore a second son at the Dominican Friary in Shrewsbury (a fourth daughter, Margaret, had died in infancy the previous year). This new prince was called Richard, and he was created Duke of York in 1474, thus setting a precedent for the tradition that the second son of an English monarch is usually given this title. Soon, more children joined the royal nursery: Anne in 1475, George (who died at the age of two) in 1477, Katherine in 1479, and Bridget in 1480. This last princess was dedicated to religion from her infancy, and entered Dartford Priory at the age of seven.
In 1475, Edward IV appointed the Prince of Wales Guardian of the Realm during his coming absence in France which was to last from 4th July to 20th September; the Queen was granted £2,200 yearly for the maintenance of her eldest son whilst he lived at court. The Prince made a state entry into London on 12th May, and was knighted by his father on Whitsunday at the Palace of Westminster. In France, Edward IV concluded with Louis XI the Treaty of Picquigny, which provided for the betrothal of Edward’s eldest daughter Elizabeth of York to the Dauphin of France. Commines says that the King and Queen were delighted with the match, anticipating that Elizabeth would have a glorious future as queen of France. Henceforth they had her dressed in the French style and addressed as Madame la Dauphine.
A year later the Prince of Wales’ marriage came under consideration, when Edward IV opened negotiations with Ferdinand and Isabella, the joint sovereigns of a newly-united Spain, for the hand of their daughter and heiress, the Infanta Isabella. These dragged on for two years until Isabella was superseded in the succession by her brother Juan, born in 1478; seeing her political value diminished, Edward IV lost interest. His next choice was the daughter of the late Duke of Milan, but the Duke’s widow, Bianca of Savoy, was against the match, so the King had to abandon it.
The Prince of Wales and his younger siblings were not the only children born into the House of York during the 1470s. The Duchess of Clarence’s first child had died at birth, but in 1473 she bore a daughter Margaret, and in 1475 a son Edward, who was styled Earl of Warwick in right of his mother. A fourth child, Richard, arrived on 6th October, 1476 in the new infirmary at Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire, but – according to the Tewkesbury Abbey Chronicle – his mother never recovered from the birth. By 12th November she was so ill that she was taken home to Warwick Castle to die. She lingered until 21st December, and her infant son followed her to the grave on 1st January. After lying in state for thirty-five days, the Duchess’s body was buried in a new vault behind the high altar of Tewkesbury Abbey, near her Beauchamp forefathers.
The loss of his wife merely added to Clarence’s woes. He was royal, he was wealthy, he had been given by the King his splendid London house, The Erber, and his household numbered nearly 300 persons and cost £4,000 yearly at that time to run. Yet all this was not enough. He still burned with resentment because Gloucester had received so much of the Warwick inheritance; it was Gloucester who held sway in the north where once the Nevilles had ruled, whereas Clarence was baulked of power by the King, who would not even let him go to Ireland to fulfil his duties as Lord Lieutenant. It does not seem to have occurred to him that he had given Edward no cause to trust him, and that he had been lucky to be forgiven for his earlier treachery.
Gloucester’s power was not the only reason for Clarence’s dissatisfaction. At court, the Wydvilles held sway, and in Wales, that other potential power base, their influence was paramount. It was obvious to Clarence that he was politically isolated and that the King had no intention of allowing him more than the semblance of power. In 1477, to make matters even worse, Edward IV thwarted Clarence’s attempt to marry the young Mary of Burgundy, whose father, Duke Charles the Bold, had been killed at the battle of Nancy, leaving her sole heiress to that great duchy. As Mary’s husband, Clarence would be Duke of Burgundy and ruler of a powerful continental principality. Edward IV had no intention of allowing this to happen, and urged Mary’s marriage to Maximilian of Austria. Croyland says that this ‘increased Clarence’s displeasure still further’ and that from now on the brothers ‘each began to look upon the other with no very fraternal eyes’.
What really lay behind Edward’s aversion to the match was his knowledge that Mary of Burgundy had a claim to the English throne through her grandmother Isabella of Portugal, a granddaughter of John of Gaunt. There was also, according to Rous and Vergil, a popular prophecy then in circulation, which foretold that ‘G’ should follow ‘E’ to the throne. Both writers say that Edward was much troubled by this prophecy, since Clarence’s name was George. Then Queen Elizabeth added fuel to the fire when she proposed her brother Rivers as a husband for Mary of Burgundy, a proposal that was treated with contempt by the Burgundian court. But when Clarence, abandoning his suit, proposed to marry a Scottish princess, Edward refused to grant permission for that also.
Clarence was not the man to take this kind of treatment meekly. He retaliated by striking at the Queen, and the Rolls of Parliament record how he set about doing this. In the spring of 1477, Elizabeth Wydville had in her service a woman called Ankarette Twynho, a respectable widow of good family who had previously served the late Duchess of Clarence. On 12th April, without any warrant, 100 of Clarence’s retainers dragged Ankarette from her home near Frome in Somerset, seized her valuables, and shut her up in the jail at Warwick. Three days later she was brought before the justices at Warwick Guildhall and accused of having administered ‘a venomous drink mixed with poison’ to the Duchess, and also of being the means whereby the Queen had used sorcery to bewitch her sister-in-law and so help to bring about her death. The jury, intimidated by Clarence, duly found the helpless Ankarette guilty as charged, and she was taken that same day to the public gallows and hanged, pitifully protesting her innocence. With her suffered John Thoresby of Warwick for allegedly poisoning the Duchess’s baby.
The allegations made by Clarence against Ankarette Twynho were so patently fabricated, and so touched the Queen’s reputation and honour that retribution was inevitable. Furthermore, Clarence had debased royal justice by his unlawful arrest and murder of his victims. Yet the Council, well aware that his real target was the Queen and at the same time fearful of scandal, did its best to suppress the truth.
The Wydvilles had never had any reason to love Clarence. He had denounced the King’s marriage, and been responsible with Warwick for the executions of the Queen’s father and brother John in 1469. It was hardly surprising therefore that the Wydvilles quickly retaliated with a counter-charge of sorcery against Clarence, and that the King decided to give his brother a taste of his own bitter medicine as a warning.
Early in May, 1477, Edward IV ordered the arrest of Dr John Stacey, an Oxford clerk and astronomer of sinister reputation. After lengthy questioning and torture, Stacey revealed that Thomas Burdett, a member of Clarence’s household, had asked him to cast the horoscopes of the King and the Prince of Wales, with a view to predicting when they might die. Evidently the forecast was unsatisfactory, as before long the two men were allegedly ‘moulding leaden images’ of Edward and his son in order to bring about their deaths by black magic. Of course, the implication was that Clarence was the prime mover in the plot, but the King did not as yet go so far as to arrest his own brother. Stacey and Burdett were arraigned and condemned as a warning to him, and were executed on 20th May at Tyburn, Burdett declaring, ‘Behold I die, but I did none of these things.’ Clarence, by-passing the King, had protested their innocence before the Council but was ignored; instead, the Council declared that the evidence against Ankarette Twynho would be re-examined.
Clarence should have been warned, but rushed headlong into further trouble. He began by publicly denouncing the King as a bastard and a necromancer, and alleging that Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Wydville was null and void because tradition forbade kings of England to marry widows. Clarence then incited, or became involved in, a minor rebellion in the eastern counties against the King, and rumour had it in Europe that he was plotting with Louis XI to help Margaret of Anjou invade England. There may have been no truth in this, but it did not help matters. Finally, Clarence attacked the Queen, openly accusing her of having murdered his duchess by poison and sorcery, and pointedly refusing to eat or drink anything at court.
The King, with astonishing forbearance, turned a blind eye on all these things, probably realising that Clarence would soon enough become the victim of his own follies. Few took him seriously, and he had very little real power. But when Edward went to Windsor in June, Clarence went beyond the point of no return. Storming into the council chamber at Westminster, he insultingly denounced the King’s justice and the sentences on Stacey and Burdett, and had their written declarations of innocence read aloud by a priest who was with him.
When he heard what Clarence had done, the King’s patience gave way. Honour demanded that Clarence be punished for this crowning act of lesè-majesté. The Queen was insisting upon it. Mancini says she ‘remembered the insults to her family and the calumnies with which she was reproached, namely that she was not the legitimate wife of the King. Thus she concluded that her offspring by the King would never come to the throne unless the Duke of Clarence were removed, and of this she easily persuaded the King. The Queen’s alarm was intensified by the comeliness of the Duke of Clarence, which would make him appear worthy of the crown.’ Elizabeth’s fear of Clarence was, it seems, far greater than the King’s, and this has led some writers to conclude that he knew something about her past that she did not want revealed. There is, however, no evidence that this was so, and we should remember that Clarence’s allegations in respect of the King’s bastardy and the validity of his marriage were alarming enough in the circumstances. Logically speaking, given his state of mind at that time, if Clarence had known any secrets about the Queen that could be used to his advantage, he would certainly not have hesitated to make them public. Instead, he had fallen back on old, baseless rumours about his brother and invented grounds for the invalidity of the royal marriage that were entirely nonsensical.
Edward IV left Windsor immediately and went to Westminster, where he summoned Clarence and the Mayor and aldermen of London. In the presence of the latter, ‘with his own lips’, he accused Clarence of ‘going above the law’ and ‘conduct derogatory to the laws of the realm and most dangerous to judges throughout the kingdom’, as well as usurping the royal prerogative by acting ‘as though he had used a king’s power’. Clarence could not deny that he had done these things, and he was arrested and incarcerated in the Tower of London on a blanket charge of ‘committing acts violating the laws of the realm’. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Clarence was a danger to his brother and to the succession. He languished in his prison, traditionally in the Bowyer Tower, until in November 1477 Edward IV made up his mind to try him publicly for his offences. Parliament was then summoned, chiefly for this purpose.
On 15th January, 1478, the day before Parliament was due to convene, a royal wedding took place. The bridegroom was the King’s younger son, the four-year-old Duke of York, and the bride was six-year-old Anne Mowbray, Duchess of Norfolk in her own right since the death in 1476 of her father, John Mowbray, fourth and last Duke of Norfolk in the Mowbray line. The wedding, celebrated at St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, was a splendid state occasion, with almost the whole royal family and court attending. After the marriage, the King induced Parliament to pass an Act declaring that York should enjoy the dukedom of Norfolk and the Mowbray inheritance for life, in right of his wife, even if she predeceased him. This proviso overlooked the superior claim that Anne’s coheirs, the Howards and the Berkeleys, would have to the inheritance in the event of her death. The King had come to an accommodation with them, but there was no avoiding the fact that what he had done was against all legal precedents governing the laws of inheritance and there were many who blamed the Queen’s influence for this.
On the day following his son’s marriage, Edward IV opened Parliament and Clarence was brought to the House of Lords to be indicted on a new charge of high treason. He faced a hostile chamber, whose members had been well-briefed and even bribed by the King, as Croyland infers, with regard to the verdict they should deliver. Many were only too eager to acquiesce to the King’s wishes, for Clarence had made many enemies and few friends during his turbulent career. Others, though, were shocked to see the King’s brother on a capital charge.
It was an extraordinary hearing. The King himself read out the long indictment, the text of which was incorporated into the Act of Attainder afterwards brought before Parliament. The indictment accused Clarence of ‘new treasons to exalt himself and his heir to the regality and crown of England’, stressing that these were ‘much higher, much more malicious treasons than had been found at any time previously during the reign’. The King stated that he had ‘ever loved and cherished [Clarence], as tenderly or kindly as ever creature might his natural brother’, giving him ‘so large portion of possessions that seldom hath been seen. The Duke, for all this, no love increasing, but growing daily in more and more malice’, had ‘falsely and traitorously intended and purposed firmly the extreme destruction and disinheriting of the King and his issue’. He had ‘spread the falsest and most unnatural coloured pretence that man might imagine, that the King our most sovereign lord was a bastard, and not begotten to reign upon us’. He had not only kept his copy of a document drawn up in 1470 naming him Henry Vi’s heir, but was now claiming also to be the heir to York. Finally, he had plotted to send his infant son to Ireland, ‘whereby he might have gotten him assistance and favour against our sovereign lord’; a child resembling young Warwick was to have been substituted for him during his absence.
These were all quite specific charges, and all equally damning; every one attracted the death penalty. There was silence as the King read them out. Croyland recalled: ‘Not a single person uttered a word against the Duke except the King; not one individual made answer to the King except the Duke.’ But Clarence’s protests availed him not at all, nor did his offer to have the case decided by ‘wager of battle’. Edward IV meant to have a conviction for high treason, and Croyland says he did not give Clarence a chance to defend himself properly.
The Act of Attainder against Clarence became law on 8th February 1478. On the previous day the Duke of Buckingham had been appointed Seneschal of England in place of Gloucester, and in that capacity he pronounced sentence of death upon the prisoner. It may be that Gloucester had asked to be spared this duty. Buckingham also sentenced the condemned man to the forfeiture of his honours, titles, lands and estates to the Crown. Croyland felt that the King had secured his brother’s condemnation ‘on dubious grounds’, but there was no doubt that Clarence had committed the crimes of which he had been accused.
Both Croyland and Vergil place the responsibility for Clarence’s condemnation solely on the King, and they were probably right to do so, but it was widely believed at the time that the Queen and her faction had been the prime movers in the matter; they had a motive for doing so, and had probably been waiting for an opportunity to eliminate their enemy. In 1483, Mancini heard that the Queen’s brother, Edward Wydville, and her sons, Dorset and Grey, had been instrumental in securing Clarence’s conviction.
Gloucester certainly believed that the Wydvilles had brought about his brother’s condemnation, perceiving that it was a triumph for them, but while this must have been galling in the extreme to him, he did not lift a finger to save Clarence. He may well even have acquiesced in his fall, for there is some contemporary evidence that Gloucester was involved in the proceedings against Clarence. He was at court at the time, for his nephew’s wedding, and had attended the Council meetings at which Clarence’s fate was discussed. He also played his part in ensuring that Parliament was obedient to the King’s wishes: five members at least were his own men. Gloucester also benefited more than anyone else from Clarence’s fall. The Attainder against Clarence left Gloucester next in line to the throne after the King’s issue; on 15th February his son Edward of Middleham was created Earl of Salisbury, a title that had been borne by Clarence; and on 21st February, Gloucester himself was given Clarence’s high office of Great Chamberlain of England. More says that, while Gloucester was opposed to his brother being executed, ‘some wise men’ were of the opinion that he was not displeased by Clarence’s fall.
Edward IV was understandably reluctant to put his own brother to death, and he refused for over a week to give his assent to Clarence’s execution. Before long, the Commons were clamouring for justice to take its course, as with any other traitor, and the Speaker came to the Bar of the Lords, requesting that what was to be done should be done at once. Finally, a deputation of members went to the King, who had no alternative but to accede to their demand for Clarence’s death. At the request of their mother, the Duchess Cecily, the sentence was commuted from the full horrors of a traitor’s death by hanging, drawing and quartering to beheading or, according to the French chronicler Molinet, any other method preferred by Clarence. The Duchess also begged that the execution take place in private, to avoid some of the scandal that publicity would lend to what was perceived primarily as an act of fratricide.
On 18th February, 1478, Clarence was informed that he was to die that day in the Tower. The Calendar of Patent Rolls records that he asked for compensation to be paid to Lord Rivers ‘in consideration of the injuries perpetrated on him and his parents’ by Clarence and Warwick. Then, according to the Great Chronicle of London, ‘the Duke of Clarence offered his own mass penny in the Tower, and about twelve of the clock at noon made his end in a rondolet of Malmsey’. Being drowned in wine was an unusual method of execution but Molinet says that Clarence himself had suggested it once in a joke to the King, adding that the Duke had lately expressed a real wish to end his days in this manner. Many contemporary chroniclers, including Commines, Mancini, and the Frenchmen Jean de Roye and Olivier de la Marche, corroborate the details given by Molinet and the author of the Great Chronicle; only Croyland is noncommittal, saying: ‘The execution, whatever its nature may have been, took place in the Tower of London.’ A portrait of Clarence’s daughter Margaret, painted around 1530, shows her wearing a miniature wine-cask on a bracelet at her wrist – a poignant memento of her father’s fate.
Two days after Clarence’s death, Ankarette Twynho’s heir Roger petitioned the King to reverse the verdict and sentence on his mother, and his petition was granted.
Clarence was buried beside his wife in Tewkesbury Abbey, where his skull and a few bones are now displayed in a wall-niche near the high altar. He was given a noble funeral, the King bearing the cost and providing ‘right worshipfully for his soul’. A beautiful tomb, surmounted by effigies of the Duke and Duchess, was raised to their memory, but has long gone, and the site of their vault is marked merely by a grille in the floor behind the high altar.
Clarence’s attainder meant that his orphaned children could not inherit his titles or lands, which had reverted to the Crown. Warwick, however, held his earldom in right of his mother, and the King allowed him a portion of her estates. The Queen’s eldest son, Lord Dorset, bought the wardship and marriage of Warwick, and he and his sister Margaret were sent to Sheen to be brought up with Edward IV’s children.
Many modern writers have linked the subsequent brief imprisonment of Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, with the fall of Clarence. Stillington was a doctor of civil law, a brilliant intellectual with a great capacity for intrigue. He had been Chancellor of England from 1467–73, and had always enjoyed the favour of Edward IV. But between 27th February and 5th March, 1478, Stillington was arrested on a charge of ‘violating his oath of fidelity by some utterance prejudicial to the King and his estate’. We do not know what he had said to give offence, nor is there any evidence that his misdemeanour was in any way connected with Clarence. It is possible that Clarence had allied himself with Stillington; his West-Country estates bordered upon Stillington’s diocese. It may be that the Bishop had helped to spread Clarence’s slanders about the King’s bastardy and his marriage, but there is no proof of this. If Stillington’s offence had been treasonable, or if he had posed any real danger to the King’s security or the royal succession, he would have been permanently removed from the scene, as Clarence had been. Yet he was released on 20th June, 1478, on payment of a fine, and later given several respectable positions at court without, however, regaining his former influence.
Vergil and More both asserted that Edward IV came to regret having executed Clarence, and Croyland, who knew the King, wrote: ‘As I really believe, [he] inwardly repented very often of this act.’ Vergil says Edward frequently lamented that no-one had interceded on Clarence’s behalf; yet the removal of Clarence had been seen by the majority as a necessary evil that made good political sense. Nevertheless, it had set a precedent for violence within the royal family itself, and demonstrated how ruthless a king sometimes had to be if he wished to remain securely on his throne.
Gloucester was certainly one who learned this lesson well, even as he was bitterly lamenting his brother’s death. Only three days after it he procured the King’s licence to set up two chantries at Middleham and Barnard Castle, so that prayers could be said in perpetuity for his dead siblings and all those of his House. According to Mancini, he blamed the Wydvilles for Clarence’s execution. ‘Richard was so overcome with grief for his brother that he could not dissimulate so well but that he was overheard to say that he would one day avenge his brother’s death.’ The Duke knew how ruthless the Queen could be, and must have recalled how, in 1467, she had stolen the King’s signet ring and given the order for the execution of the Earl of Desmond, in revenge for his having made disparaging remarks to the King about his choice of bride. Unfortunately, the infamous John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, who carried out the execution in Ireland, exceeded his brief by murdering also two of Desmond’s young sons, an atrocity for which Elizabeth Wydville must bear some responsibility.
This tale has often been dismissed as a Tudor fabrication: the Queen’s role in the executions was first publicly referred to in a petition to the Privy Council of her grandson, Henry VIII, made by Desmond’s heirs in 1538. Falsely slandering King Henry’s grandmother was hardly the way to secure a favourable answer to the petition, and there was no reason why the Desmond family should fabricate such allegations. Moreover, the deed is attested to in the Register of the Mayors of Dublin: ‘This year, the Earl of Desmond and his two sons were executed by the Earl of Worcester at Drogheda,’ and it is also referred to by Gloucester himself in a letter to Desmond’s surviving son, in which he says that they shared a common grief, and that those responsible for Desmond’s death and the death of his two sons were the same as had brought about Clarence’s death.
Gloucester now had the measure of the Wydville faction, and would remain acutely aware that they were capable of removing by fair means or foul any member of the royal House who stood in their way. ‘Thenceforth,’ wrote Mancini, ‘he came very rarely to court.’