9
The death of Gloucester left York heir presumptive to the throne until such time as the Queen bore a son – or Henry named Somerset his heir.
In every respect York was the perfect heir presumptive: wealthy, respected, experienced in warfare and government, and already the father of a growing family with healthy sons. He had a better claim to the throne than Henry VI himself, though few dared voice this opinion, but the Duke by his overt loyalty to the King had already demonstrated that his ambitions did not include a crown. Nevertheless, he had the resources and the ability to pursue his claim if he so wished, as the court party was well aware, and for this reason, York was not acknowledged as Henry’s heir. Instead, the question of the succession passing to the Beauforts was raised, and although the matter was ultimately left in abeyance, once again York’s rights were overlooked.
York had been dismayed by Gloucester’s death, which left no one but himself to lead the opposition to the court party, who he believed were doing untold damage to the kingdom. As Gloucester’s political heir, he knew himself to be particularly vulnerable, for had not Suffolk just persuaded the King to charge his late uncle with high treason? What might the over-powerful Suffolk now do to York? The Moleyns affair had proved just how malicious the court party could be. York, therefore, was reluctant to assume Gloucester’s militant stance. From now on he would tread a careful path, ever wary of his enemies’ motives, yet ever zealous to reform the present régime and gain a voice on the Council.
Physically York was not the most prepossessing of men. He was short in stature and stout, with a square-shaped face and dark hair; his youngest son, later Richard III, was said to bear a strong resemblance to him. No portrait of York survives, and there are only two extant representations with any claim to authenticity. One is in a stained-glass window donated to Cirencester Church before 1443 by two of York’s squires. This shows his head and shoulders, adorned with a coronet and his famous gold collar with enamelled roses. His face is clean-shaven and his hair cut in the military style affected by Henry V. He has heavy-lidded eyes, a prominent nose and a small mouth. In Penrith Church, Cumberland, is an engraving showing the Duke with long hair and a forked beard; this is a copy of a lost original, and its authenticity is unsubstantiated.
York was a man of considerable intelligence, who could speak and read Latin. He was a political conservative, a proud, serious, even austere man, aloof, remote in manner, and difficult to warm to. He was not popular among his fellow magnates and did not seeany reason to cultivate their friendship. His mother had died at his birth and the execution of his father when he was four may have led to a certain coldness in him and an insistence on keeping his own counsel. On occasion, he could act impulsively without consulting anyone else, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Indecisiveness was periodically another of his faults, as was inconsistency. He was courageous in battle and an able commander, but even here his record was marred by occasional stubbornness and recklessness. His arrogance was a constant bar to success in every field.
York, like Gloucester, desired to see the government formulate an aggressive war policy against France, as Henry V would have wished. He was also genuinely concerned about the misgovernment of the court faction and resolved to eliminate the endemic corruption and indiscriminate patronage of its régime. There was, naturally, an element of self-interest in this: York could only gain from the court party being publicly discredited. Moreover, winning the support of the magnates to do this would prove difficult: most were either in awe of the ruling clique or hoping to gain some advantage from supporting it, while others believed that not to support a faction so openly favoured by the King would have appeared as crass disloyalty.
York, however, preferred to distinguish between loyalty to the King and loyalty to a faction that was doing him no service. To York, loyalty to the King meant demanding the reform of the government and the dismissal of all the corrupt advisers and time-servers who were dragging the reputation of the Crown into the dust with their own. If the King could not see how badly the kingdom was suffering from misgovernment, York and the few others who supported him could, and meant to do something about it – as well as furthering their own interests along the way.
York now began to promote himself as the champion of good government and reform, and this was how the people soon came to regard him and why he rapidly gained popularity with the commons. There were those, however, who did question whether York was sincere about reform. His enemies said he was as guilty of oppressing his tenants by intimidation and the perversion of justice as other lords, citing the case of his steward on the Isle of Wight, who was said to live ‘like a lord, with as rich wines as could be imagined’, as a consequence of his extortion and corruption. There is in fact little evidence that such practices were widespread on York’s estates. Certainly there was a degree of self-interest in his aims, but his later record is proof that his concerns about misgovernment were indeed genuine.
York’s favourite residence seems to have been his castle at Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire, which was situated on an imposing site above the River Nene and was surrounded by a thriving market town. Today, only fragmentary remains testify to the existence of this magnificent castle and the adjacent buildings adjoining the collegiate church. Mounds of earth to the south of the church are all that remains of the college quadrangle and library. The church, however, survives as a monument to the House of York, and is decorated with York’s personal badge, the falcon and fetterlock; here are the tombs of his family, and here, too, he himself would one day be laid to rest.
The mightiest fortress owned by York was Ludlow Castle, the ancient stronghold of the Mortimers, which was situated on a commanding and strategic position on the Welsh Marches, and would become the chief headquarters of the House of York during the Wars of the Roses. The castle dates from Norman times, and massive remains survive today. In the inner bailey is an unusual circular twelfth-century chapel, as well as the luxuriously appointed domestic ranges, built by the Mortimers in the fourteenth century.
York’s London residence was to become Baynard’s Castle on the banks of the Thames. It stood in Upper Thames Street between Blackfriars and St Paul’s Wharf, not far from where the River Fleet flowed into the Thames. Built in the eleventh century by one of the Conqueror’s companions, a knight called Baynard, it had passed into the hands of the powerful de Clare family and been rebuilt with stone walls and ramparts in the twelfth century. Later, it was acquired by Gloucester who, after a disastrous fire in 1428, built it anew with battlements and strong fortifications, so that it resembled Warwick Castle. On the Duke’s death it reverted to the Crown, and Henry VI eventually granted it to York, who is first recorded as living there in 1457.*4
In these residences York lived in some splendour with his duchess, Cecily Neville, a proud woman of robust health who bore him thirteen children. She lived to be eighty, a remarkable age in those days, having witnessed the deaths of four dukes of York and the creation of the future Henry VIII as the sixth duke. Richard and Cecily appear to have been an amicable, even happy couple. She accompanied him on all his overseas tours of duty, and several of their children were born abroad. Cecily’s piety was legendary, and as she grew older, her life was increasingly dominated by religious offices and prayers. She rose at seven, attended eight services, and was in bed by eight o’clock every evening. Occasionally, though, she would take some wine or indulge in ‘honest mirth’. Later on, political propaganda would accuse her of playing her husband false with a French archer called Blaybourne, and of foisting upon the Duke two bastard sons, but her renowned piety makes nonsense of this, as indeed she did herself when she protested very vehemently against being so unjustly slandered.
The Yorks’ children were born over a period of seventeen years, from 1438 to 1455. There were eight boys and five girls. Four of the boys, Henry, William, John and Thomas, died young, as did two of the girls, Joan and Ursula, who was the youngest child. The surviving children were Anne, born 1439 at Fotheringhay, and married before 1447 to Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter; Edward, born 1442 at Rouen, and styled Earl of March during his father’s lifetime; Edmund, born 1443 at Rouen and created Earl of Rutland in 1446; Elizabeth, born 1444 at Rouen; Margaret, born 1446 at Fotheringhay; George, born 1449 at Dublin Castle; and Richard, born 1452 at Fotheringhay, a frail child whose survival of infancy surprised everyone. Cecily’s will of 1495 refers mysteriously to ‘my children, Katherine and Humphrey’, but these names do not appear in any contemporary list of York’s issue, and were probably his grandchildren, Katherine and Humphrey de la Pole. All of Richard and Cecily’s children were descended thrice over from Edward III, through Lionel of Antwerp, John of Gaunt and Edmund of Langley.
After Gloucester’s death, the vultures descended. The Queen was given his manor of Placentia at Greenwich, a magnificent house set in lovely ‘gardens of pleasaunce’. Margaret immediately arranged for extensive building works to be undertaken there: new latticed windows were installed, others were re-glazed, terracotta floor tiles bearing the Queen’s monogram were laid, and new pillars carved with marguerites were erected outside. A great chamber was built for the Queen’s own use, as well as a parlour and a gallery overlooking the gardens, where an arbour was put up. Finally, new tapestries were hung. In the refurbished house – now a palace – ‘disguisings’ or pageants were mounted for the entertainment of the King and court.
Gloucester’s greatest rival did not long enjoy his triumph. Cardinal Beaufort was now well over seventy and nearing death. By 1447 he had virtually retired from political life, although his party remained dominant under the leadership of the Cardinal’s protegés, Suffolk and Somerset. On 15 March 1447, Beaufort died at Wolvesey Palace at Winchester; he was buried in the nearby cathedral, where a fine effigy wearing a cardinal’s hat adorns his tomb.
With his death, the government lost one of its chief financial mainstays. The Cardinal left one last bequest of £2000 to the King but Henry refused it because he felt that his uncle had given him enough during his lifetime. ‘The Lord will reward him,’ said Henry. Beaufort’s nonplussed executors protested, urging that the money be used for the King’s educational foundations; Henry, to their relief, agreed.
Somerset was now head of the powerful Beaufort family, and was also the King’s nearest Lancastrian relative. Again there were rumours that he would be named heir presumptive despite the existence of letters patent barring the Beauforts from the succession. Somerset, having inherited his uncle’s fortune, was now a very wealthy man, and was accorded precedence as a full prince of the blood. The King relied heavily on his counsel and showered him with gifts and honours, which aroused the resentment of other magnates, especially York, who justifiably regarded Somerset as a threat to his own position.
Together with Suffolk, Somerset now led the court party, both men enjoying the full confidence of the King and Queen. Suffolk was at the zenith of his power: around this time he was promoted to the influential offices of Chamberlain of England, Captain of Calais, Warden of the Cinque Ports, Chief Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster north of the Trent, Chief Justice of Chester, Flint and North Wales, and steward and surveyor of mines for the whole country.
With Gloucester dead, there was no one to lead the protest about the surrender of Maine and Anjou, and in the spring of 1447 a French embassy arrived to conclude the matter. This provoked another storm, but again it was not the King who was the object of his subjects’ patriotic indignation – it was Suffolk, who had become the scapegoat for Henry and his councillors and was widely perceived as the villain of the piece. If he had been unpopular before, he was now loathed. The people blamed him for the downward slide of England’s fortunes in France and for giving up Henry V’s conquests in return for a dowerless queen.
In May, Suffolk offered the Council a satisfactory explanation of his actions, but this did not mollify the commons, who were now blaming him for all the ills that had befallen the realm, especially the faction-fighting in Council – for which he was, to a degree, responsible – the government’s failure to pay its soldiers in France, the embargo placed on the import of English cloth by the hostile Duke of Burgundy, and the near-bankruptcy of the kingdom.
By 27 July negotiations with the French were complete. Henry VI agreed to surrender Maine by 1 November provided compensation was paid to his garrison in the province. On the following day he appointed commissioners to transfer Maine and Anjou to Charles VII.
The Queen also shared in the unpopularity of the court party. In June the keeper of Gloucester Castle arrested a man who had been overheard lamenting the coming of the Queen to England, a sentiment probably shared by many of the King’s subjects. For them, Margaret was irrevocably associated with Suffolk and the loss of Maine and Anjou, and neither the Queen nor the Earl improved matters when they attempted to evade customs duties on the export of wool and alienated the English merchants, who had hitherto been staunch supporters of the Crown.
With the deaths of Gloucester and Beaufort the Queen’s influence grew. Every letter signed by the King was now backed up by a similar one from the Queen, who demanded that she be kept informed on all political matters, especially negotiations with France and military and financial affairs. State papers and reports on seditious persons were submitted for her inspection, and neither Suffolk nor Somerset, nor their associates Cardinal Kempe, Bishop of Chichester, and Lord Say, would act without Margaret’s approval. It could therefore be said with some truth that an eighteen-year-old girl was effectively ruling England.
By the end of 1447 it was apparent that the emergence of the Queen on to the political stage had given birth to a new factional rivalry to replace that of Gloucester and Beaufort. Beaufort’s peace party had become the court party, headed by the Queen, Suffolk and Somerset, which controlled the King and the government. The opposing faction comprised a group of lords who had, for various reasons, been excluded from this charmed circle, mainly because they upheld the ideals for which Gloucester had fought for most of his career, or were critical of the ruling party. This faction now looked to York to lead them.
The court party feared York, had consistently blocked his attempt to participate in government, and had been searching for ways to neutralise his influence. As with Gloucester, they wanted him out of the way. On 9 December 1447 he was appointed the King’s Lieutenant in Ireland for a term of ten years. This ill-conceived appointment was the brainchild of Suffolk, and it was obvious to York that he was being sentenced to virtual exile. Hence he managed to delay his departure for two years.
York had rendered loyal service, digging deep into his coffers to finance his expenditure on behalf of the Crown. Not once had he displayed any inclination to press his superior claim to the throne. Yet Henry and his advisers now treated him as an enemy; and by their wholly unjustifiable slights against one who was a prince of the blood and premier magnate of the realm, they made him an enemy.
November came and went, and still Henry VI had not handed over Maine and Anjou. In February 1448, Charles VII, tired of his prevarications, led his armies into Maine and laid siege to the city of Le Mans. When the garrison claimed it could not hold out, Henry at last agreed on a formal surrender, which took place on 16 March and was conditional upon the truce being extended until April 1450. In England, the surrender was greeted with anger and bitterness. A worried Queen urged Henry to promise financial compensation to dispossessed English landowners returning from Maine, which he did, though the money was never forthcoming and this created more ill-feeling. So did the fact that the Queen’s father had fought at King Charles’s side in Maine, which did not endear Margaret any more to the English though in fact it had caused her great distress. Naturally, it was she and Suffolk who bore the brunt of public opprobrium.
In the spring of 1448 the King demonstrated his confidence in the leaders of the court party by creating Edmund Beaufort Duke of Somerset, which meant that his twelve-year-old son Henry was now styled Earl of Dorset, and William de la Pole was created Duke of Suffolk. This was the first time that ducal rank had been conferred on anyone other than members or relatives of the royal family, and reflects the enormous influence and prestige enjoyed by Suffolk. Possibly Henry wished to raise the two men at court to equal rank with York, and it may have been in response that York began using the surname Plantagenet, which had been in abeyance since the twelfth century, when it had been borne by Count Geoffrey of Anjou, father of Henry II.*5 York adopted it in order to emphasise his royal connections and proximity to the throne, implying, perhaps, that it should have been he who was advising the King, not an upstart like Suffolk or a magnate tainted by bastard descent such as Somerset. There is no evidence, however, that York at this date had any designs on the throne, and it would be more than a decade before he himself would dispute Henry’s title.
In 1448, York’s chief concern was that the King would repudiate Henry IV’s letters patent and declare Somerset his heir. He felt, quite justifiably, that the elevation of Somerset was a deliberate attempt to block his own political and dynastic ambitions, and knew that it was Suffolk and Somerset, and not the King, who were responsible for his political exile. Thus the rivalry of York with the two men now crystallised into a deadly political feud that would have serious repercussions throughout the next two decades. The situation was such that a man could not support one side without being deemed the enemy of the other.
Somerset and the Queen began a whispering campaign, spreading rumours that York, by calling himself Plantagenet, was plotting treason, intending to mount a coup and take the throne. Tainted with suspicion and impeded by his own aloofness and arrogance, York found it increasingly difficult to win the support of his fellow magnates. At length, says Waurin, in 1449, York was ‘expelled from court and exiled to Ireland’, this being ‘provoked by the Duke of Suffolk and other members of his party’, including Somerset, who was ‘responsible for these deeds’ and ‘overjoyed’ at the Duke’s departure. York’s post was no sinecure, for Ireland at that time was a land riven by tribal feuds and struggles. His achievements there were modest, but he did win the favour and affection of the Anglo-Irish settlers and even some of the native Irish, thus establishing a long-standing affinity between Ireland and the House of York.
That same year, at a salary of £20,000, Somerset, as Governor of Normandy and chief commander of the English forces in France, took up residence at Rouen, capital of the duchy. His appointment, says Waurin, was ‘due to the solicitation and exhortation of the Queen and of some of the barons in power’. The truce with France still held, but the Duke was assured that his allowance would be paid even if war did break out. There is, however, no evidence that he ever received it.
As commander-in-chief Somerset was a failure, having neither ability nor capacity for the job. Waurin says he carried out his duties ‘so negligently that afterwards, due to his misconduct, the whole country was returned to the control of the King of France’, and in fact his term of office marked the beginning of the end for the English in France. In March 1449, Henry VI himself, urged on by Suffolk, broke the truce and reopened hostilities, authorising an attack on the Breton town of Fougères, which the English speedily occupied. The onslaught made nonsense of Henry’s much-vaunted desire for peace and effectively amounted to a new declaration of war. It gave the French the opportunity they had been waiting for, and in June they launched a full-scale attack on Normandy, determined to reconquer it. In July, Charles VII formally declared war on England.
Fears were voiced that the French offensive would lead to the ‘shameful loss’ of Normandy, the centre of English power in France, ‘which God ever defend’, and by 15 August, according to the chronicler Henry Benet, ‘about thirty fortified towns in Normandy were lost’. Charles VII’s status among the monarchs of Europe was now in the ascendant, and his victories gave both him and his subjects new confidence and the impetus to carry to a successful conclusion what had been begun.
In the late summer of 1449, his armies overran Normandy and began an assault upon Rouen, which had been in the hands of the English for thirty years. Somerset agreed to discuss terms and to withdraw from Rouen if the French would leave the English in possession of the towns they held along the Norman coast. This was agreed, and in October the Duke surrendered Rouen to the victorious French, handing over the veteran John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury and others as hostages. The cheering citizens, who regarded King Charles as their liberator, then flung open the gates and welcomed him and his army with ecstatic rejoicing. Somerset, says Benet, ‘fled to Caen’. The French were now determined to have all, and soon broke their agreement with the Duke. In December, the ports of Harfleur – so dearly won by Henry V – and Honfleur fell to Charles VII.
By now, the disastrous effects of the peace policy were plain to see, and the mood of the English people was ugly. Rumours were spread alleging that Margaret was not René’s daughter but a bastard, and therefore unfit to be Queen of England. Public anger was also fuelled by high food prices and the profligate alienation of crown lands. In July, Parliament had ventured to suggest that an Act of Resumption be passed, which would revoke all grants of land and annuities made by the King since his accession, but Henry, manipulated by those who had profited by such grants, had refused to authorise it; instead, he had dissolved Parliament.
But it was Suffolk who was the real target of the people’s hatred. Few Council records for this period survive, which suggests that the Duke had often acted independently of the Council and taken upon himself much of the important business of government. He was doing the House of Lancaster no favours, for its prosperity depended upon a Council that was publicly perceived to be united and equitable. Instead, thanks in no small measure to Suffolk, it was riven by factions, excluded from decisions affecting the weightier affairs of state and its reputation was now such that many people had lost all confidence in it, seeing it purely as the focus for the private ambitions of the landed aristocracy.
The virulent criticisms of Suffolk greatly alarmed the Queen, and she urged Henry to deal forcefully with his fractious subjects. He, who had also to consult Parliament on the critical situation in France, summoned it to meet on 6 November. There were many who perceived that Suffolk was unlikely to survive this latest storm with his power intact; his supporters, guessing that this was the end for him, hastened to dissociate themselves from him, some even resigning from their posts in the royal household. His enemies were poised for the kill.
The Lords and Commons combined to bring Suffolk down. The process began when the Duke’s long-standing enemy, Lord Cromwell, rose in Parliament and publicly accused Sir William Tailboys, Suffolk’s squire, of plotting to kill him. Suffolk denied that he knew anything about such a plot, but this did not help Tailboys: people believed him guilty, and he was fined £3000.
In Ireland, York was being kept informed of what was happening in England and holding himself in readiness to support the attack on Suffolk, anticipating that the fall of the favourite would provide an opportunity for him to elbow his own way on to the Council. His informants had already told him that there were others of like mind to himself who desired reform of the administration and would be glad to see Suffolk go.
On 9 December Adam Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, resigned as Lord Privy Seal. Moleyns, a political animal rather than a churchman, was a member of the court party, a former supporter of Suffolk who now believed that the Duke had abused his power and should be ousted from it. On 9 January, he was in Portsmouth, attempting to explain Suffolk’s misdeeds to an angry and unruly mob of sailors who were about to embark for Normandy. He had also brought their wages, long unpaid, but when he handed them over, the sailors found that they had received far less than was their due. They shouted abuse at the Bishop, denouncing him as the betrayer of England, and when he haughtily reminded them that they were insulting a man of God, his manner so incensed them that they fell on him and mortally wounded him. Later, it was alleged that, as he lay dying, he accused Suffolk of being responsible for the loss of Maine and Anjou. After the murder Parliament, which had been in recess over Christmas, refused to reassemble. Thus began the violent, watershed year of 1450.
Suffolk was frantically trying to consolidate his position. Early in 1450, with the help of the Queen, he secured a great matrimonial prize for his son John – his ward, the seven-year-old Lady Margaret Beaufort, a very wealthy little girl who was also the direct descendant of John of Gaunt and had a better claim to the throne than her uncle, the Duke of Somerset, whom many expected to be named heir-presumptive. Margaret’s claim had until now largely been overlooked because she was female and a child, but an ambitious husband, with the means and determination to do so, might well be successful in pressing it.
The significance of this betrothal was not lost on Suffolk’s contemporaries, some of whom drew the unlikely conclusion that he was in fact plotting the overthrow of Henry VI in order to secure a crown for his son and thereby establish the de la Pole dynasty on the throne of England. Others believed, perhaps correctly, that the Duke hoped to persuade the King to recognise Margaret Beaufort as his heir. Either way, the confusion surrounding the future succession proves that at the time the people of England had no clear idea as to who had the best claim to succeed a childless Henry VI.
When Parliament finally reassembled on 22 January, Suffolk felt it appropriate to justify his rule. He reminded the assembly how loyally his family had served the Crown, both in England and against the French, and declared he had been of late the victim of ‘great infamy and defamation’, and was much misunderstood. He swore he had never betrayed his king or his country. Was it likely he would do so for ‘a Frenchman’s promise’?
The Commons were unimpressed. Suffolk’s day was done; there had to be a scapegoat for the recent disasters and humiliations in France and misgovernment at home. On 26 January an angry Parliament petitioned the King that he be arrested and impeached, and the Duke was sent to the Tower of London while the Commons prepared a Bill of Indictment. The Lords had decided to keep a low profile until specific charges were made. While the Duke was in the Tower, there was a great armed presence of the watch of the city of London about the King and in the capital, ‘and the people were in doubt and fear of what should befall, for the lords came to Westminster and Parliament with great powers as men of war’. Influenced by York, the Council sent officers to Norfolk to put a stop to the local tyrannies there of Suffolk’s agents, Thomas Tuddenham and Henry Heydon.
On 7 February the Commons presented the King with a formal petition to indict Suffolk. There were many charges, the most serious being that in July 1447 Suffolk had treasonably plotted an invasion of England with the French ambassador and had divulged secret intelligence to the French. He had promised to cede Maine and Anjou to Charles VII ‘without the assent, advice or knowing of other [of] your ambassadors’, which had led directly to the loss of Rouen and other towns in Normandy. He had also plotted the deposition of King Henry with the intention of setting on the throne his own son John, whom he had betrothed to Margaret Beaufort, ‘presuming and pretending her to be next inheritable to the Crown’. Not once was the Queen’s name mentioned.
On 12 February, the King, using his royal prerogative, commanded that the charges against Suffolk be referred for his own decision, even though the Commons wanted the Duke arraigned at the bar of the Lords. Then Henry dithered for a month. His frustratedCommons, meanwhile, added on 9 March other charges to the petition, accusing Suffolk of ‘insatiable’ covetousness leading to the embezzlement of crown funds and taxes and the impoverishment of the monarchy, and influencing the appointment of sheriffs who would ‘fulfil his desires for such as him liked’. He had committed ‘great outrageous extortions and murders; manslayers, rioters and common, openly-nosed misdoers, seeing his great rule and might in every part of your realm, have drawn to him and been maintained and supported in suppressing of justice, to the full heavy discomfort of true subjects’. Much in these charges was certainly justified, but there is no evidence that Suffolk planned to make his son king, nor that he had plotted with the French. Nor was he the only magnate to indulge in bribery and corruption on a grand scale.
Henry VI refused to allow any of the charges to be formally examined by Parliament. Instead, on 17 March, he called upon Suffolk to answer them. The Duke denied them all, describing them as ‘too horrible to speak more of, utterly false and untrue, and in manner impossible’. The Chancellor then informed him that the King held him ‘neither declared nor charged’ a traitor ‘in respect of matters mentioned in the first bill’. Because the Commons were loudly baying for Suffolk’s blood, the King conceded that there might be some truth in the second set of charges. The Queen, anxious to save the man who had arranged her marriage and been father-substitute and support to her ever since, had persuaded Henry that a sentence of exile should be sufficient to satisfy the Commons. When the storm had blown over and a suitable time had elapsed, Suffolk could be brought back and restored to favour. The King agreed to this, and sentenced Suffolk to exile for five years from 1 May.
The Commons and the people were furious. To them, it seemed that parliamentary justice had been circumvented by those whose proper function it was to enforce it. By his intervention the King had saved Suffolk’s life: the mood of Parliament was such that, had the Duke stood trial, he would undoubtedly have been condemned to a traitor’s death. The Lords were angry because they had not been consulted as to Suffolk’s fate. The Londoners, in particular, were incensed by the sentence: when the Duke was released from the Tower on 18 March, he went to his house at St Giles to prepare for exile, but a mob tried to force an entry, intent upon lynching him, and he was obliged to escape by a back door. Frustrated of their prey, the Londoners seized his horse and assaulted his servants instead. The Duke took refuge at his country seat at Wingfield in Suffolk, where he remained during the six weeks prior to his banishment. An emotional farewell letter to his son still survives, in which he urges the boy to be loyal to God and his sovereign.
On Thursday, 30 April, Suffolk sailed from Ipswich for Calais and exile with two ships and a little pinnace, which (according to a letter written by William Lomnour of London to John Paston in Norfolk on 5 May) he sent ahead with letters ‘to his trusted men in Calais to see how he should be received’. Later that day, in the straits of Dover, the Duke’s ship was intercepted by a fleet of small vessels which had been lying in wait for him, ‘and there met with him a ship called the Nicholas of the Tower’. The Nicholas was not a pirate ship, as some later historians have suggested; Benet describes her as ‘a great vessel’, and she was in fact part of the royal fleet, her master being Robert Wennington, a ship-owner of Dartmouth.
Rumour later had it that, when Suffolk saw this ship approaching, he asked what name it bore, and when he was told he remembered an old seer who had once prophesied that if he could escape the danger of the Tower, he should be safe. Now ‘his heart failed him’. The master of the Nicholas ‘had knowledge of the Duke’s coming from them that were in the pinnace’, and now he sent his men in a small boat to Suffolk to say ‘he must speak with their master. And so he, with two or three of his men, went forth with them in their boat to the Nicholas, and when he came there, the master bade him, “Welcome, Traitor!”’ Suffolk was on the Nicholas ‘until Saturday following, and some say he was tried after their fashion upon the articles of his impeachment and found guilty. And in the sight of all his men’ – presumably Suffolk’s small fleet was following – ‘he was drawn out of the great ship into a boat, and there was an axe and a stock, and one of the lewdest of the ship bade him lay down his head’. If he co-operated, he was told, ‘he should be dealt with fairly and die on a sword’. So saying, the sailor ‘took a rusty sword and smote off his head with half a dozen strokes, and took away his gown of russet and his doublet of velvet, mailed, and laid his body on the sands of Dover. And some say that his head was set on a pole by it.’ The head and body lay rotting on the beach for a month until the King gave orders for their removal to Wingfield Church for burial.
Suffolk died a much-hated man, and many rejoiced at his end. Political songs vilified him and gloatingly recounted his fall. The identity of his killers has never been established; presumably they acted on the orders of men who felt that the Duke should be made a scapegoat, or of those who wished to see him suffer a just punishment for his crimes, a punishment that the law had failed to provide.
Suffolk’s widow, the indomitable Alice Chaucer, broke the news of his death to the Queen, who was so grief-stricken that she could not eat for three days and wept continually during that time. After that, anger surfaced, and the desire for retribution. Suffolk might be dead, but she still had Somerset and other powerful supporters who would help her avenge him. But the days when the court party could rule unchallenged were now numbered, and there remained the deadly enmity between York and Somerset as the gravest threat to peace between the contending factions.