Part IV
20
The reign of Henry VI was one of the most disastrous of all the medieval kings of England. He came to the throne when he was only 9 months old after the sudden death of his warrior father, King Henry V. Henry VI was raised and educated to be a powerful monarch, but he never really took to it. Being a child king, he never had the benefit of learning from his father’s example of good kingship. Instead, he formed his ideals of kingship from chivalrous medieval books and religious texts. As a result, he became extremely pious and preferred peace over conflict.1 These would be admirable qualities for a modern-day ruler, but no good if you were expected to rule a large, unruly medieval kingdom such as England.
In November 1437, just days shy of his sixteenth-birthday, King Henry VI dismissed his regent council and declared that his minority was over, meaning he was ready to rule independently on his own. It was a disaster from the very beginning. Henry had no ability to discern between good advice or bad advice from his councillors. As a result, he was very easily swayed to change his position depending on the last person to catch his ear. Plus, he wasn’t really that interested in affairs of state, so he mostly let the people around him make decisions for him. His strong preference for peace with France would be a monumental error that would contribute to his downfall, not to mention the loss of the Hundred Years’ War with France.2
While Henry struggled to establish his reign in England, his cousin Richard, Duke of York, was on his second tour of duty as lieutenant-general of France. Although Richard was very close in the line of succession, his position at court was quite precarious. He was a prince of royal blood, however, he was continually denied his rightful place at court. King Henry VI had abdicated authority to his personal favourites and they were dead set on pushing the powerful duke of York completely out of the picture in order to maintain control over King Henry and his government. Richard spent his entire adult life trying to wrestle away power from the king’s greedy councillors in order to protect his lands and titles for himself and his heirs, including his son Edward, Earl of March, the future King Edward Iv. Richard’s actions in the 1450’s laid the groundwork for his son Edward to one day overthrow Henry VI and ascend the throne of England for the House of York.
Edward IV’s father Richard had been involved in court politics from a fairly young age. When he was only 6 years old he joined his cousin King Henry VI’s household3. At the tender age of 13, he was knighted.4 When Richard was 19 years old, he was appointed as the temporary constable of England while the duke of Bedford, Henry VI’s uncle, was out of the country. On 1 May 1436, when he was 25 years old, Richard, received his first major royal appointment: lieutenant-general of France, in charge of directing military campaigns in the long-running Hundred Years’ War.5 This was an extremely prestigious position and Richard led several early victories, including the capture of several small French towns, but before long, things in France became untenable for Richard. He was not given the proper manpower, money, or resources to fight a successful war in France. The wages he had been promised by Henry VI for both himself and his soldiers were far into arrears, forcing Richard to fund the war effort entirely out of his own pocket.6 This was the beginning of the tension between Richard and Henry that would eventually erupt into a full-blown civil war between the houses Houses of York and Lancaster known today as ‘The Wars of the Roses’.
Despite the issues he experienced during his first tour of duty as lieutenant-general of France, Richard returned for a second tour in July 1440. This time he took his young family with him, including his wife, Cecily Neville, and their 2-year-old daughter Anne, and set up their primary residence at Rouen in Normandy. Edward Plantagenet, the future King Edward IV, was born in Rouen on 28 April 1442. After Edward, Richard and Cecily went on to produce six more sons (only three lived into adulthood) and three daughters (two survived).
Shortly after Edward’s birth, King Henry recalled Richard to England and granted the lieutenancy of France to his new favourite, John Beaufort, who had also just been given the dukedom of Somerset. Richard was greatly perturbed at being recalled from France, especially since he had established his family there and had invested so much of his own money and resources. In fact, the king still owed him over £20,000 for funding the French offensive out of his own pocket.7
The duke of Somerset’s brief time as lieutenant-general of France was a total disaster. First, he invaded the French duchy of Brittany by mistake even though it was an English ally. Henry VI was forced to pay reparations to mend the rift Somerset had caused with Duke Francis of Brittany. After further misfortunes, Somerset fled back to England alone and abandoned his army in France. Somerset’s failure was so profound that even King Henry refused to receive him at court. Somerset died in May 1444, most likely by suicide for the shame that his actions in France had caused for himself and his family.8 Against all odds, his only legitimate daughter, Margaret Beaufort, would go on to play a major part in English politics and would reverse his family’s fortunes in a monumental way through her only child, Henry Tudor.
Due to Somerset’s colossal failure, Henry VI had no other choice but to negotiate a hugely unpopular truce with France in 1444. Henry sent one of his most trusted advisors, William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, to manage negotiations and directed him to make peace at any cost. The result of Suffolk’s negotiations was the Treaty of Tours which was concluded on 28 May 1444. Henry was so desperate for peace that he astoundingly agreed to renounce the whole of England’s claim to the French throne. Even more outrageous was Henry’s agreement to cede two major territories back to France: Maine and Anjou. Lastly, the peace treaty was sealed with a marriage contract between King Henry and a French princess: Margaret of Anjou. The choice of Margaret was highly questionable, and the English people were outraged since Margaret brought with her no titles, lands, or dowry.9 Typically, foreign marriages of royalty came with hefty dowries, but Margaret’s father was broke.
The biggest opponent of Henry’s treaty with France was his uncle Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Humphrey was Henry VI’s closest living male relative and therefore the heir to the throne since Henry had not yet sired any children. Humphrey had fought alongside Henry’s father, Henry V, in the Hundred Years’ War and had served as co-protector of England while Henry VI was a child. Duke Humphrey was livid at Henry for going against his advice and making the disastrous treaty. He was disgusted at Henry for handing over the English-held French territories that Henry V had died fighting for. Duke Humphrey was particularly outraged that young King Henry released his father’s prisoner, the duke of Orléans, who had been held captive since the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. In fact, Humphrey felt so strongly that he came out of retirement and led public protests against his nephew’s policy.10 The king’s councillors were eager to silence Humphrey. In April 1447 he was arrested and charged with treason for plotting to overthrow the king, which was an obvious lie. Gloucester would not have to face the charges because he mysteriously died just a few days after being taken into custody. The official story is that he had a heart attack or stroke due to the shock of his arrest, but many suspected it was murder.11
After the death of Humphrey, the closest male relative to Henry VI was Richard, Duke of York, which made him next in line to the throne. Only months after Humphrey’s death, King Henry started to succumb to pressure from his councillors to eliminate all rivals to his throne and they considered Richard to be the most serious threat of them all. Richard was one of the wealthiest men in England and his influence was so vast that he could raise a large army on short notice, which made him very dangerous. To remove him from having a direct hand in England’s governance, Richard was appointed to the lieutenancy of Ireland for a period of ten years. This was a big step down from being the lieutenant of France and was twice the usual appointment length. In fact, many saw it as a political exile.12
Richard arrived in Ireland on 6 July 1449 and made his way to Dublin where he would set up his home base of operations. Within three months York had many of the local lords swearing fealty to him. This was an astonishingly quick success since Ireland had been all but ungoverned and ungovernable for hundreds of years. In France, the situation was the exact opposite. King Henry’s favourites Suffolk and the new Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, had completely bungled their military campaigns and lost even more of the English-held territories. Henry’s refusal to punish his favourites incited a great uproar in London and the people decided to take justice into their own hands. As England was now too dangerous for him, Suffolk fled the country and sailed for Burgundy on 2 May 1450. Shortly into his voyage, his ship was intercepted by a small English fleet and was brought aboard their ship, Nicholas of the Tower. The crew staged a mock trial and found Suffolk guilty of treason. They beheaded him with a rusty sword and shoved his corpse overboard, leaving it to wash up unceremoniously on the shores of Dover.13
Further disorder struck the kingdom of England shortly after Suffolk’s death when news came of the crushing defeat at the Battle of Formigny. The English army of 3,000 men was nearly decimated by the French and the great stronghold of Normandy was lost.14 It was greatly unsettling for the people of England, not just for the loss of life but also for fear that the French army might now bring the fight to English shores. Immediately after Henry received news about the devastating loss at Formigny, he ordered the people of Kent to muster men and gather weapons in case of a French invasion.
As the Kentishmen nervously watched the shores for any sign of French ships, a rumour began circulating that King Henry held the people of Kent responsible for Suffolk’s recent death at sea. As punishment, many Kentishmen would be brought to trial and hanged, while the king also planned to turn the whole of Kent into a royal forest.15 This rumour incited hysteria among the Kentish people. They blamed Henry and his corrupt councillors for putting them and the whole of England in this precarious situation and, feeling their backs were against the wall, they chose to defend themselves.
In the summer of 1450, a huge discontented Kentish mob numbering in the tens of thousands marched upon London to challenge the king and his corrupt councillors.16 The mob was led by a mysterious character named Jack Cade. His real identity was rumoured to be an Irishman named John Mortimer who was related to the House of York. In a lengthy manifesto, Cade asserted that the king was surrounded by false councillors who drove the kingdom into poverty and left the country lawless. The rebels complained that ‘the lords of his royal blood have been put from his daily presence, and other mean persons of lower nature exalted and made chief of his privy council’.17
King Henry spent June 1450 in London attempting to put down Cade’s rebellion, but he failed miserably. By late June he conceded to the rebels by granting them permission to arrest and try those they deemed as treasonous, and Henry fled London for the safety of Kenilworth Castle. They set up a traitor’s court at Guildhall where they tried and executed about twenty men.18
With no help coming from the king, the citizens of London decided to take matters into their own hands and mount their own defence. On the evening of 5 July 1450, a small army of armed citizens marched to London Bridge and confronted the Kentishmen in a bloody battle that lasted until the next morning. At least forty London citizens were killed but they did succeed in pushing Jack Cade’s men out of the city. The next day, Queen Margaret, who had stayed behind in London, offered pardons and terms to which the rebels accepted, except for Jack Cade. The queen put a price of 1,000 marks on his head and he was captured just days later. He died during the trip back to London but nevertheless his head was lopped off and placed on a pole above London Bridge.19
King Henry and Queen Margaret returned to London in late July 1450 believing the unrest to be over, but they couldn’t have been more mistaken. Henry learned no lessons from the Kentish uprising. He dismissed all the rebels’ concerns, especially the ones about replacing those evil councillors about him. In fact, Henry did quite the opposite when shortly thereafter he awarded the office of constable of England to the duke of Somerset, Edmund Beaufort. Emboldened by Cade’s rebellion and Somerset’s rise, York was now ready to force the issue and demand his rightful place next to King Henry VI helping him govern the realm.