Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess Page 6
As the mausoleum for the house of York, the church at Fotheringhay still contains two major tombs. The first duke to be buried there was Edward who had met his death at the battle of Agincourt. He was struck from his horse and, as it was a hot day and he was a very fat man, he had been suffocated by the weight of his armour. Margaret’s parents and her brother Edmund would also be buried there. The Duchess Cecily’s will showed her deep attachment to Fotheringhay.7 She left the college a whole series of bequests including graduals, processionals, mass books, a quantity of ecclesiastical vestments, three blue velvet copes and a great canopy of state made of crimson cloth of gold.
Today, although the falcon and fetterlock badge has vanished from the castle, it survives on the York tombs near the main altar of the church. The original gothic monuments were destroyed during the Reformation, but new Renaissance tombs were built at the command of Queen Elizabeth I who was very mindful of her York inheritance. The coffins of the ducal family were transferred from the ruined choir into the chancel. The bodies were inspected and a papal pardon was found hanging on a silver ribbon, ‘fair and fresh’, around the neck of the pious Duchess Cecily.8 Margaret’s own remains, although buried with similar devotion, would not find so peaceful a resting place.
Whether she was actually born at Fotheringhay or not, Margaret certainly passed some part of her childhood there. It may have been in the collegiate library that she acquired her first knowledge of the beautiful manuscripts that she was later to collect with such enthusiasm and discrimination. With its fine new buildings and high standard of comfort, Fotheringhay prepared Margaret for the luxury and elegance with which she was to be surrounded for the rest of her life.
Considering Margaret’s reputation for piety, the Abbey of the Holy Cross at Waltham would perhaps make the most appropriate birthplace.9 It lay on the Essex side of the River Lea, close to Epping Forest and only about twenty-five miles from London, on the direct route to Fotheringhay. Cecily must surely have broken her journey there on many occasions since it had a comfortable hostel well used by noble visitors as well as a famous history. It was claimed that Waltham Abbey had been founded by a Danish thane called Tovi, who endowed it with the Holy Cross discovered on his manor of Montacute. The church had been rebuilt by Earl Harold and reconsecrated on Holy Cross Day in the presence of King Edward the Confessor. Tradition has it that Harold stayed at the Abbey on his way south to Hastings, that his war-cry had been ‘the Holy Cross’, and that after his defeat and death his body had been brought back and secretly buried there. Due to its associations with Harold, it was ignored during the Norman period but recovered much of its prestige by the thirteenth century, when it became a popular centre for pilgrimage and one of the richest Augustinian foundations. When Margaret had the opportunity to found and reform religious orders in the Low Countries, she would show a partiality for the Augustinian order.10
In 1446, the Abbot of Waltham was William of Hertford. He was a courtly abbot who had entertained many important visitors including Queen Catherine de Valois and John, Duke of Bedford. The latter was so devoted to the Abbey that he asked to be buried there if he should die in England.11 Since she had only recently returned from Rouen, with all its associations with the Duke of Bedford, Duchess Cecily would have known all about the attractions of the Abbey, and she would have been interested in its well-known hospital, which had flourished since the early thirteenth century.
The so-called Annals of Waltham Abbey, which are extant for the years 1445-7, have references to the winter storms and to the Parliament of January 1447, but there is no mention of a visit by the Duchess or of the birth of her child. The third of May was the feast of the Holy Cross, and it is possible that the chronicler who states that Margaret was born there may simply have confused the feast day with the Abbey of the same name.
However in the year of Margaret’s birth, the Duke of York was particularly busy in the area around Waltham. In March he obtained a licence to retain twelve masons and bricklayers on his manors in Essex, Hertfordshire and Middlesex, and in the following October he was granted the royal income from Waltham to cover his expenses when on royal business to London.12 During July Richard visited Hunsdon, a manor lying only nine miles north of Waltham Abbey. By 1448 Hunsdon belonged to Sir William Oldhall, one of the Duke’s most loyal supporters, who seems to have acquired a group of York’s manors in Hertfordshire when Richard was in need of cash. Money had been lavished on Hunsdon, which was described as a ‘fine house after the mode of a castle’.13 It was reputed to have cost £4,667, a huge sum for a knight to spend, but understandable if it was the Duke’s property. In the year after Margaret’s birth, Richard was granted a licence allowing him to build and crenellate the tower which, at more than 100 feet high, was known as one of the finest constructions of its age. It was built in the ‘new’ Flemish style, with an elegant overstorey, called an oriel, and decorated with gilded vanes.
Hunsdon was not merely a very opulent house, it was also a convenient residence close to London. Between 1445 and 1447, Richard’s affairs involved him in close attendance on the court and the council. It would have been very convenient for him and his family to use Hunsdon as a base, near to London but free from the pestilence which so often affected the city during the summer months. There is, moreover, some evidence that Margaret had a special interest in the manor of Hunsdon. Nearly half a century later, as the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, she signed a series of contracts with Richard of York, better known as Perkin Warbeck.14 In these contracts she was promised two pieces of property in England, Hunsdon and Scarborough, which she would receive when Richard became King of England. Is it possible that Hunsdon rather than Waltham Abbey or Fotheringhay Castle was in fact Margaret’s birthplace?
Fotheringhay, Waltham or Hunsdon? Fortunately the puzzle of Margaret’s birthplace is not typical of the task facing her biographer. All the major events of her later life are documented with much greater accuracy and, in certain matters such as her marriage and the administration of her dower lands; the chief problem lies in selecting from the great mass of evidence which has survived. It is however, difficult to discover anything about her early life. This is to be expected. Margaret’s significance was only appreciated when seen within her family context. There was little place in the world of the late fifteenth century for individuals and little interest in their youth, especially that of a younger daughter.
Money was one of the many causes of friction that existed between Richard and the Crown. The Duke claimed that he was owed more than £30,000 in arrears for his salary and expenses in France. Although he was the richest noble landowner in England, Wales and Ireland, he had a regular shortfall of income.15 Due to his lengthy absences abroad, his estates were probably not well managed. Unlike his daughter Margaret, Richard did not attend closely to his estates and neither did the Duchess Cecily. His officials had a relatively free hand and there appears to have been a considerable leakage of funds.
In the year of Margaret’s birth, he was in particularly urgent need of large sums of money. Not only was he committed to paying out a costly dowry for his eldest daughter, Anne, but he was also in the process of establishing an independent household for his two eldest sons, Edward, Earl of March and Edmund, Earl of Rutland. He met his needs by selling off or mortgaging some of his manors, by raising loans on his plate and jewels, and by pressing the King for payment of the debt he was owed. This caused considerable irritation in the Royal Council, desperately trying to find the money required for the defence of Normandy, Maine and Anjou. There were stormy scenes between the Duke’s supporters and Adam Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, Keeper of the Privy Seal and a supporter of the Duke of Suffolk. Moleyns retaliated by accusing York and his supporters of misappropriating funds intended for the army in France. Although Richard successfully sued Moleyns for slander, the confrontation increased his alienation from the court, and especially from Suffolk and the Queen.
This lack of royal favour had serious implic
ations for Margaret and her sisters. Richard needed court influence to achieve suitable marriages for his two sons and three daughters.16 Procuring worthy and honourable marriages for their children was one of the major duties and preoccupations of all noble families. Indeed the success of Cecily’s own parents contrasts sharply with the failure of Richard of York. Earl Ralph had pursued his dynastic ambitions and fulfilled his responsibilities as a father with a great deal of determination. Richard did not enjoy the same success. By 1446 only the eldest child, Anne, had secured a suitable marriage, to Henry Holland, one of Richard’s wards and the heir to the duchy of Exeter. This was exactly the sort of marriage alliance that Cecily Neville must have wanted for all her children. Henry Holland was a direct descendant of Edward III and so the marriage would enhance Anne’s own royal inheritance.
Richard had even more ambitious marriage plans for his eldest son. During the diplomatic exchanges concerning the marriage of Henry VI to Margaret of Anjou, he entered into negotiations for the marriage of Edward to Madeleine, the younger daughter of King Charles VII. Suffolk apparently gave York’s proposals his full support, but as soon as the Anglo-French treaties were completed and Margaret of Anjou had become Queen of England, Edward’s French marriage receded from view. No doubt Richard had suspicions that he had merely been encouraged to expect a royal marriage for his own son in order to buy his support for the King’s marriage and for the peace treaty. After this, Richard was unable to find suitable betrothals for his children. It is significant that Anne’s marriage took place before the new Queen Margaret was fully established and the betrothal of Elizabeth, the second daughter, was only secured when the Queen’s influence was curtailed and Richard of York was acting as Protector of England for the second time.
The correct lineage was very important to the Duke and Duchess of York when it came to the selection of marriage partners for their children. It was not to be a paramount issue for their eldest son Edward, but it was a matter which would concern their youngest son Richard when he set aside his ‘less royal’ nephews in 1483. Margaret too was well aware of the dangers of disparagement by marriage. In 1477, Anthony Woodville was rejected for her step-daughter Mary on the grounds that he was a mere Earl,17 and although Margaret herself was widowed at a relatively early age, she was not one of those dowagers, so common in the fifteenth century, who remarried a man of lower rank.
At the time of Margaret’s birth, Richard found his political ambitions, his personal fortunes and his marriage plans for his children all blocked by the lack of royal patronage. In addition to these personal problems there was a major political storm brewing between the court supporting a policy of peace with France, and their opponents who resented any surrender of English territory. The hawks had gathered around Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the King’s only surviving paternal uncle.18 The popular old Duke Humphrey emerged from the semi-retirement into which he had been forced by the disgrace of his wife, Eleanor Cobham, to lead the opposition to the surrender of Maine and Anjou. It was common knowledge by December 1446 that the King had agreed to the surrender of these territories and that Suffolk was ready and willing to confront Gloucester over this policy.
Suffolk prepared for this clash of wills by summoning Parliament to meet at Bury St Edmunds, a city well within his own area of influence. When Humphrey arrived he was met with a long indictment against him and placed under arrest. Within the week he was dead, officially and probably truly as the result of a stroke. Richard of York’s immediate role in the conflict between Gloucester and Suffolk is not at all clear. He was certainly not an open supporter of Duke Humphrey. Perhaps he was still hoping for a royal appointment and did not wish to antagonise the court. Moreover he had not opposed the King’s marriage to Margaret of Anjou and he may well have supported the general drift of Suffolk’s policies. In the months that followed, York was rewarded for his silence over Gloucester’s death. He was given Gloucester’s old office as Steward and Justice-in-Eyre of all the royal forests and he acquired some of Gloucester’s property, including Baynard’s Castle in London. Finally, late in 1447, the Duke of York had his reward. He was given a new royal appointment as the Lieutenant of Ireland.
At first sight this would appear to have been a poor alternative to the Lieutenancy of France already granted to Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Contemporaries saw the Irish appointment as a sign of ill favour, ‘ande in that same yere the Duke of York Richard Plantagenet was exsyled to Ireland’.19 York showed himself in no hurry to take up the appointment. He did not leave from Beaumaris until July 1449, and he would remain in Ireland for little more than a year. There were uncomfortable precedents with the last two Mortimer Earls of March, both of whom had died in Ireland. Perhaps Suffolk and the Queen were hoping that the latest Mortimer heir might perish in the same way. Nevertheless Richard may not have been entirely dissatisfied. He was fortunate to be out of France at a time when so much of the English territories were being surrendered. Even Rouen was lost. Financially, too, the crown tried to satisfy the Duke, settling a large part of its debt to him and offering generous terms for his service in Ireland. Moreover, he had private interests in Ireland with his estates of Meath, Connaught and Ulster, lands that were part of his Mortimer and Clare inheritance.
There is no evidence that Margaret accompanied her parents to Ireland. The two eldest sons remained at Ludlow and both Anne and Elizabeth were boarded out in suitable noble households, as was the English custom. Two more male infants, William and John, had been born to the Duchess Cecily in the two years after Margaret’s birth, but both had died. Margaret remained the only child in the York nursery, probably under the care of Anne of Caux, who had joined the family at Rouen as a nurse to Edward, and stayed with them for the rest of her life. Her pension was paid by both Edward IV and Richard III.20
In Ireland the Duke and Duchess of York again enjoyed the autonomy of their own court, and the Duke rapidly became known as a popular and competent Governor. His success must have given little satisfaction to Margaret of Anjou and the news that Cecily had given birth to yet another healthy son would have added to her anxieties, especially as there was still no royal heir.21 The choice of a name for their fourth son was also likely to alarm the court, since they called him George, after the patron saint of England. This cult was very fashionable among the aristocracy of England, France and Burgundy. The two leading families of Ireland, the Butlers and the Fitzgeralds, provided godparents for the infant at his well-nigh regal baptism in the Church of St Saviour, Dublin. This Irish connection would be exploited by Margaret when she promoted the claims of George’s son against the Tudor Henry VII.
Enjoying his success in Ireland and with the losses in France in mind, Duke Richard wrote confidently to the King vowing that ‘it shall never be chronicled … by the grace of God that Ireland was lost by my negligence’.22 From Ireland he watched as the growing crisis in England paralysed the government. The widespread anger over the losses in France led inexorably to the overthrow of Suffolk, who was blamed for the English surrenders. Adam Moleyns, York’s old adversary, was assassinated, and Suffolk himself was brought to trial, exiled and murdered. Throughout these troubles a stream of messengers was kept on the road between England and Ireland. Sir William Oldhall was one of the Duke’s most important contacts. He left for England in January 1450, returning in the summer to report personally.
Duke Richard’s part in the rebellion of 1450 is difficult to assess.23 Contemporaries were also confused. The court was suspicious of his involvement, especially since Jack Cade, the rebel leader who marched on London from Kent in June, claimed he was a Mortimer and a cousin of York. The falcon and fetterlock badge was displayed and paraded around London during the disturbances. However, York’s London property was attacked by the rebels. He later claimed that jewels had been looted from his houses.
During this serious emergency, York expected to be recalled, to lend assistance to the crown and fill the place left vacant by the fall of Suffolk.
He was therefore alarmed and angered to hear that his rival the Duke of Somerset had been created Constable of England and was taking over Suffolk’s powers and offices. This not only excluded York from political power, but also threatened his claims to the throne. Edmund, Duke of Somerset, was the nearest male relation to the King on the Beaufort side and, like the Duchess Cecily, a descendant of the marriage of John of Gaunt to Katherine Swynford.24 Although the Beauforts had been specifically excluded from the royal inheritance, the presence of Somerset at court and the favour with which he was regarded by the childless Queen was a clear threat to the prospects of York and his children.
Early in September 1450, Richard left Ireland and returned to England at the head of about 4,000 armed men. In advance of his arrival, he prepared a series of petitions to put his case to the King and to justify his return.25 He claimed that ‘many promises had been to me made not performed’ and that he was still owed large sums of money. He declared that he had three main reasons for his return: he was coming to defend his reputation against rumours of his involvement in the rebellion, to take his rightful place as a royal adviser and, above all, to uphold his lineage, ‘the issue that it pleased God to send me of the royal blood’ from all who intended ‘to have undo me myn issue and corrupt my blode’.