Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess Read online

  CHRISTINE WEIGHTMAN

  AMBERLEY

  This edition first published 2009

  This electronic edition published 2012

  www.amberley-books.com

  © Christine Weightman 1989, 2009, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-84868-099-9 (PRINT)

  ISBN 978-1-4456-0968-3 (e-BOOK)

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: The Marriage of the Century

  Chapter 2: Daughter of York

  Chapter 3: The Duchess of Burgundy

  Chapter 4: 1477

  Chapter 5: Madame La Grande

  Chapter 6: ‘This Diabolicall Duches’

  Chapter 7: Bibliophile & Reformer

  Epilogue

  Postscript & Acknowledgements

  Illustrations, Map & Genealogical Tables

  List of Abbreviations

  Selected Bibliography

  Notes

  Prologue

  London, Saturday 18 June 1468:

  Cheapside was en fête, banners, tapestries and garlands of flowers hung from the high windows and the city guard had taken up their positions along the well swept streets. The Mayor and Aldermen, uncomfortably hot in their fur-trimmed robes of office, stood at the Cross, awaiting the arrival of the King’s sister coming to say her farewells to all the city merchants who had stood surety for her dowry.

  As the cheers greeted Margaret’s cavalcade there was delight and a sense of relief. It was not merely the Londoners’ pleasure at the sight of an elegantly dressed bride, but much more significantly the fact that she came riding pillion behind her cousin, the Earl of Warwick. The rumours that the powerful and popular Earl had fallen out with the King over her marriage had alarmed the city. Nobody wanted a return to the anarchy and civil war which had crippled the country for more than a decade until the young Edward had come fresh from the battlefield to be crowned at the bidding of Warwick.

  Reared in a dangerous and unpredictable world where her father, brother and uncle had all perished in a single skirmish at Wakefield, Margaret too was relieved to have the approval of her mighty cousin. Listening to the speeches and receiving the gift of rich plate which the Mayor offered on behalf of the city, she was well aware of her new importance as the bride of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, the richest duke in Europe. She rode off through the cheering throng towards London Bridge, her serious demeanour reflecting her responsibilities, both towards her own family whom she was leaving behind, and to the new country which awaited her.

  A mature and intelligent young woman, a strong sense of duty was to be the hallmark of her whole life and, in spite of the most appalling catastrophes, Margaret, unlike her brothers, would always show a consistent and courageous loyalty both to the House of York and to the House of Burgundy.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Marriage of the Century

  ‘AT KING ARTHUR’S COURT.’

  Measured by the sheer bulk of surviving contemporary accounts, the marriage of Margaret of York to Charles, Duke of Burgundy, was without doubt the most important wedding of the century.1 Princes, nobles, clerics and merchants all crowded into Bruges (modern Brugge) to attend in person. On their return they reported at length to their colleagues. Those unable to be present commissioned and collected detailed descriptions from those who had been there, of what had been worn in the wedding processions, eaten at the banquets and achieved in the jousts.

  Princes and nobles wanted blow-by-blow accounts of the nine-day tournament of the Golden Tree. Merchants and bankers were more practical; they wanted full details concerning all the fashions and fabrics worn by the magnificent retinues, and the furnishings and food supplied for the banquets. One such report was dispatched to the headquarters of the Hanseatic League at Lübeck, and another sent to Strasbourg included precise figures for the daily consumption of food and drink. Proud and patriotic, Burgundian chroniclers and writers embellished page after page with such elaborate and elevated prose that even Edward Hall, the Tudor chronicler, normally only too willing to embroider a good story, commented that he thought ‘they saye not true in a grete dele.’2 Ambitious young men like Simon Mulart turned the whole occasion into a Latin epic and hoped thus to secure lifelong patronage from the great Duke Charles.

  Among the English sources, the thirteen pages in the Excerpta Historica provide the fullest account, but the Paston letter of 8 July is the most succinct. For once John Paston was lost for words concluding his letter ‘and by my troth I have no wit nor remembrance to write to you, half the worship that is here.’3 No doubt the Paston family was furnished with much greater detail when he returned home.

  Olivier de La Marche, the Burgundian Chamberlain, who was in charge of all the arrangements for the procession, banquets and tournaments, wrote what is probably the most detailed account of the whole proceedings. However, it was to be almost forty years after the event before he found time in his busy life to sit down and compose his memoirs. Moreover, like many writers of the period he was totally indifferent to chronology, even dating the wedding to after the siege of Neuss in 1475. He was also vague and confused concerning the events which took place in the weeks immediately before the wedding. Presumably he had been so preoccupied with all the last minute preparations that he had to rely on others to tell him what was happening at Sluis and Damme. Perhaps too he thought that all this had already been well reported, and his own special interests lay elsewhere. Thus he devoted only one paragraph to the actual wedding ceremony, seven pages to the procession, five pages to the banquets and no less than seventy-two pages to the tournament.

  The survival of so many accounts of the wedding is also a consequence of the fact that, within a decade, the marriage of Margaret to Charles would be regarded as the last great scene of Burgundian glory. Indeed the marriage had a sound literary appeal. After the debacle of Nancy and the loss of the duchy to the French, there was a widespread and morbid interest in the ill-fated life of Duke Charles. Legends gathered around the memory of this fierce, energetic man, and the description of his magnificent marriage to a princess from the equally ill-fated House of York provided fascinating material for chroniclers and moralists alike.

  In every respect the marriage lived up to what was expected from a great dramatic event. The negotiations had been dogged with interruptions and arguments; there had been cliff-hanging delays over the provision of the papal dispensation and the bride’s dowry. Margaret’s journey across the Channel was suitably hazardous. Her reception was well prepared and beautifully staged, and the ten-day celebrations were both magnificent and exciting. Neither the English King nor the Burgundian Duke omitted anything that could promote and emphasise their own honour and the importance of their new alliance.

  King Edward IV, Margaret’s brother, was a great contrast to his predecessor, King Henry VI, and he never missed an occasion to enhance his own glory. As a usurper he was anxious that the new Yorkist court should be recognised throughout Europe as truly regal. He would have been well satisfied to know that Gabriel Tetzel had already judged his court to be ‘the most splendid Court that could be found in all Christendom,’4 and that Tetzel had come to this conclusion immediately after his visit to the Burgundian court, reputed to be th
e wealthiest and most magnificent in Europe. For her marriage Edward provided his sister with a luxurious trousseau and a noble entourage, which would uphold his own reputation and satisfy her honour.

  Duke Charles was equally ambitious. He had succeeded his father in June 1467 and his marriage to Margaret was the first great event of his reign. He was resolved that it should be a celebration without equal in all the annals of Burgundy, outshining the famous feasts of his father’s reign.5 Nothing was spared that was necessary to make the occasion an ostentatious display of the opulence and might of the Burgundian court.

  There was also an element of triumph and relief in the final preparations for the wedding. The whole extravaganza came at the end of two years of long and serious negotiations. In May 1467 the diplomatic arguments had reached such an indeterminate point that Sir John Paston thought it worth his while to have a bet on the result.6 He agreed to pay eighty shillings for a horse if the marriage took place within two years but only half as much if it did not. Paston lost his wager but at least he had the satisfaction of attending the wedding. There were many others who had thought or even hoped that the wedding would never take place.

  The origin of the many difficulties, which dogged the negotiations for this marriage, lay in the tricky diplomatic situation existing between France and Burgundy. The Valois Dukes of Burgundy were in a very special position in relation to France. Although their title derived from a French duchy founded by John II for his son Philip the Bold, the Dukes of Burgundy had, during a century of war and marriage, acquired many territories lying beyond the jurisdiction of France.7 Duke Charles himself inherited a vast agglomeration of lordships and counties, including the duchy of Burgundy and the counties of Charolais, Artois and Flanders, which lay within French suzerainty. He also held the duchies of Hainault, Holland, Zeeland and Brabant, and the county of Burgundy or Franche Comté, which were all fiefdoms of the Holy Roman Empire.

  These extensive possessions in the richest trading and manufacturing area of northern Europe made the Dukes of Burgundy powerful rivals to the Kings of France and England. Throughout the Hundred Years’ War the friendship of Burgundy had been essential to the success of both England and France. Indeed the withdrawal of Duke Philip the Good from his earlier alliance with England had enabled King Charles VII to drive the English out of France in the mid-fifteenth century. As heir-apparent, Charles of Burgundy had opposed his father’s rapprochement with France, and had been especially angered by the return of the Somme towns to King Louis XI in 1463. He feared an Anglo-French alliance would leave Louis free to oppose the consolidation and expansion of Burgundy. It was for this reason that Charles became interested in a marriage with Margaret of York.

  The French King was equally anxious to prevent an Anglo-Burgundian alliance. During the early years of Edward IV’s reign it seemed that he might succeed. As the Dauphin, Louis had supported Warwick and Edward against the Lancastrians, even sending a small body of men to fight for the Yorkists at the battle of Towton. It was in Edward’s interest to keep this friendship and stop Louis from giving any real assistance to the exiled Queen of England, Margaret of Anjou and to the Lancastrian cause. So early in his reign Edward began negotiations for an Anglo-French marriage. At first the proposals had concentrated on the person of the eligible Edward himself. He was offered the hand of Louis’ sister-in-law, Bona of Savoy, but Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville brought this and any other proposals to an abrupt halt. In spite of this set-back, Louis and the Earl of Warwick continued to press for an Anglo-French marriage alliance, with the proposals now centred upon Margaret and her brother George, Duke of Clarence.

  Burgundian interest in an English marriage began immediately after the death of Charles’ wife, Isabelle of Bourbon, in September 1465.8 Her death left the Count of Charolais, as he then was, an eligible widower and the inheritance of the duchy was dependent upon the lives of Charles himself and his only child, the eight-year-old Mary. Louis lost no time in offering Charles the hand of his eldest daughter, Anne. But since the princess was only four years old, not even the tempting offer of a dowry, which included the counties of Ponthieu and Champagne, could compensate for the fact that it would be many years before the infant princess could provide Burgundy with an heir.

  Moreover, by this date relations between France and Burgundy had deteriorated. The old Duke Philip had been forced to abandon his policy of friendship towards France. He fled from his own castle of Hesdin because he feared an assassination attempt inspired by the French King. There was, after all, a precedent for such a murder. Duke Philip’s father had been butchered in 1419 by servants of the Dauphin on the bridge of Montereau. Following the incident at Hesdin, Count Charles’ influence grew more dominant and his policy to ally Burgundy with Brittany and Bourbon in the War of the Public Weal against France was given free rein. At the treaty of Conflans, which finally brought the Franco-Burgundian conflict to an end, Louis was forced to return the Somme towns. Charles was well satisfied with the outcome of this treaty, and to maintain his gains he considered an English marriage.

  It was not the first time that a marriage between the Burgundian heir and a Yorkist princess had been contemplated.9 When Charles’ first fiancée, Catherine of France, had died in 1446, the Duchess Isabelle had suggested a marriage between her son and Anne of York. However, her husband Duke Philip had opposed the idea, and Charles remained unmarried until October 1454 when the Duke decided on Isabelle of Bourbon. Charles’ marriage to Isabelle had lasted eleven years and was considered to have been a particularly happy match, although it had produced only one healthy child, the Lady Mary.

  Both the contemporary chroniclers, Wrelant and Commynes claimed that a Yorkist alliance was fundamentally abhorrent to Charles because of his mother’s Lancastrian blood and his own sympathies for the deposed King Henry VI. Wrelant even has a story that Charles disliked Margaret so much that he was drunk on his wedding night and was never a good husband to her. But there is no evidence of any strong feelings either for or against the House of York on the part of either Duke Philip or his son Charles. Moreover in spite of her descent from John of Gaunt, the Duchess Isabelle had favoured a Yorkist marriage. She was well aware that the Duchess of York, Cecily Neville was, like herself, a granddaughter of the Duke of Lancaster.10 Burgundy had given shelter to both Yorkist and Lancastrian exiles, maintaining the youngest sons of Richard, Duke of York in 1461 and the Lancastrian Dukes of Exeter and Somerset after the accession of Edward IV.

  There were other important considerations, which affected relations between England and Burgundy. Although the rulers may have been primarily interested in their own territorial and dynastic standing, they could not ignore the economic links, which were so vital to the prosperity of both countries.11 Both Edward IV and the Dukes of Burgundy were dependent on the merchant community for loans, and on trade for a substantial part of their income. Economic recessions were liable to make themselves felt in civic riots and rebellions.

  Throughout the fifteenth century the Dukes of Burgundy used Anglo-Burgundian trade as a weapon against England, imposing restrictions and boycotts to force the English into negotiations either with them or with France. English Kings retaliated by moving the wool staple from Antwerp to Calais and by imposing reciprocal restrictions on Burgundian manufactures. This type of economic warfare reached a peak between 1462 and 1465 when Duke Philip was trying to force King Edward into a tripartite treaty with Burgundy and France. Burgundy placed restrictions on the export of bullion. These hit the English wool and raw cloth trade, which slumped to its lowest level for the century. English merchants and producers were badly affected but so were the merchants, weavers and cloth-finishers of Holland, Zeeland and Flanders. The English King enacted reciprocal boycotts, and a wholesale economic war ensued with restrictions on credit, fighting at the fishing grounds and increased piracy in the channel. It was a situation which could not be allowed to continue for long without serious internal difficulties in both England
and Burgundy.

  Commercial interests were closely involved in the marriage negotiations, especially on the Burgundian side. The international commercial community that centred on Bruges eagerly supported any moves which would improve the economic situation. Tommaso Portinari, the Medici agent in Bruges and the economic adviser to Count Charles, was a prominent member of the diplomatic team preparing the wedding. Lord Louis of Gruuthuyse and Lord Jehan of Hallewijn, who were the ducal governors in Holland, Zeeland and Flanders, were also among the Burgundian negotiators and they represented the noble and economic interests of their provinces.

  As soon as the negotiations for the marriage were underway, both sides relaxed some of their boycotts and restrictions. Although a final settlement on the rates of exchange was not reached until the 1470s, the export of raw cloth from England increased sharply after the marriage and within ten years it was running at double the rate of 1462 to 1465. The enthusiasm for the marriage that was felt in the merchant community was expressed in the close cooperation among English, Flemish and Italian merchants over the arrangements for the payment of the dowry and in the large merchant delegations in the bridal procession.

  When Isabelle of Bourbon died, Margaret of York was betrothed to Don Pedro of Aragon, but even before he died in the following June, an embassy was sent to England to discuss her marriage to Charles.12 Late in 1465 or early in 1466 Guillaume de Clugny, one of Charles closest advisers, arrived in London to propose the marriage. In reply to this proposal, King Edward commissioned a negotiating team in March 1466. It was a very high-powered team with the Earl of Warwick, Lord Hastings and Lord Wenlock in charge. They were instructed to discuss two possible marriages: Margaret with Charles and the Duke of Clarence, Edward’s brother, with Mary of Burgundy, Charles’ daughter. To the disappointment of Clarence, this second marriage soon vanished from the negotiations. 13