Edmund, Duke of Rutland was born into the world depicted by John Lydgate, court poet to the Lancastrian kings. It was a world in which Lydgate could produce his heroic verse Troy Book, a Middle English translation in decasyllabic couplets of Guido Delle Colonne’s Latin Historia Destructionis Troiae, and simultaneously confess that he ‘stole apples … gambled at cherry stones … [was] late to rise and dirty at meals, [a] chief shammer of illness’. It was a world where the early painters of the Italian Renaissance used jewel-bright colours equally to depict the birth of Venus or the Marriage of the Virgin, where saints’ shrines were buried under gifts of golden coins and the dead were piled up in plague pits, sprinkled with lime and covered over to await the next layer of bodies. In Edmund’s world, explorers might reach the coast of Africa and Lollards call for religious purity, but comets blazing through the sky heralded disaster and crops might be blighted by an old woman muttering charms. It was a world of paradox, of extreme sensitivity and vision, juxtaposed with an essential pragmatism, often a brutality, of approach. Sickness and health, poverty and riches, squalor and art, piety and war, life and death sat alongside each other.
In 1443, England was in the twenty-first year of the reign of Henry VI and the hundred and sixth year of the Hundred Years’ War. It was still a green and pleasant land, largely covered with fields of wheat, barley and oats or where sheep, pigs and cows dotted the landscape, around a fifth of which was owned by the Catholic Church. A small number of very wealthy families held the reins of government but the country’s administration was riddled with corruption and abuses, and the Crown itself was in a desperate financial state. The previous decade had seen a number of harvests fail and livestock fall prey to disease, driving up prices and rents, resulting in higher taxation. Henry had succeeded to the throne before his first birthday and spent the next two decades under the influence of several unpopular ministers. The country was just seven years away from the eruption of violence that was Jack Cade’s rebellion, when peasants ran riot across the south-east, executing bishops and claiming that Henry had lost control of his kingdom.
The costly war with France had been started by Henry’s great-great-great-grandfather, Edward III, and had run its course of highs and lows through several generations. England had experienced some terrible losses but also some resounding victories. No doubt the young king had heard tales of armies crossing the Channel in a huge fleet, marching through the Norman countryside and laying siege to walled cities: the names of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt were the foundation of the young king’s international heritage. Agincourt itself had been won by his own father, who led his troops against a much stronger opponent on St Crispin’s Day, and later took as his wife the King of France’s daughter. The beautiful Catherine of Valois had borne their only child in December 1421: thus Henry VI was half-English and half-French, the blood of two long-standing enemies mingling in his veins. By the Treaty of Troyes, negotiated by his father in 1420, he was to be king of both countries, so he had been crowned in both Westminster Abbey and Notre-Dame, Paris. The body of Henry VI, his physical person, his very duality, was to be the solution incarnate to the century-old conflict. It was a heavy mantle for his young shoulders.
In 1443, Henry’s man in Normandy was Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. A decade older than the king, York had attended both of Henry’s coronations and succeeded Henry’s uncle as Lieutenant of France. In practical terms, though, this meant ruling a patchy empire including Normandy, Picardy, Touraine, Poitou and the southern Languedoc region while Catherine’s half-brother, Charles VII, held the remainder of France in the Valois name. If nothing else, Charles had Paris, the traditional heart of the country, which the English had abandoned in a disastrous state in 1436 following a prolonged siege. The new capital of the English region was Rouen, and it was there that Richard, Duke of York arrived with his family in the summer of 1441 to take up residence in the city’s castle. Today, nothing more than the keep remains of Rouen Castle, the Grosse Tour, standing out as a turreted donjon to the north of the city, on Bouvreuil Hill, which had once been the site of a Roman amphitheatre. The Yorks would have known a substantial complex of several towers enclosing an inner courtyard with buildings, all ringed about by walls and ditches. The surviving tower, 30m tall with walls 4m thick, gives some impression of the vast scale of the castle and its defences, but is also a reminder of the Anglo-French conflict that was very recent history for the Yorks. Referred to today as Joan of Arc’s Tower, the Grosse Tower actually never held her captive; her prison was demolished in 1809. In 1441, though, the castle, both towers and the city, would still have been ringing with memories of the young girl who believed herself called upon by God to free the French and was burnt by the English in Rouen’s marketplace. Only a decade had elapsed since her pyre had cooled.
Richard, Duke of York had been born in 1411. He was Anne Mortimer’s third child, but this labour proved too much and she died the following day, at around the age of 20. Descended from both the second and fourth surviving sons of Edward III, the boy had a strong claim to the throne; in fact, his mother’s Mortimer ancestors had been the preferred heirs of Richard II before he was deposed by the Lancastrian line, by Henry VI’s grandfather. This had diverted the line of succession away from York, whose family’s reputation had been further besmirched by the failed attempt his father made to reclaim their right in 1415. Death touched the family twice in this significant year. Richard, Duke of Conisburgh was executed for his role in the Southampton Plot, but this had not prevented his 4-year-old son from inheriting his ducal title upon the death of his uncle at Agincourt – reported alternately to have sacrificed himself to save the king, or been trodden into the mud because of his heavy armour, Edward of Norwich, Second Duke of York passed the family inheritance on to the orphaned boy.
Richard had been raised as a loyal subject to the Lancastrian crown and, in 1429, had made a good marriage into a family who shared the king’s bloodline. His 14-year-old bride was Cecily Neville, a granddaughter of John of Gaunt, fifth son of Edward III, founder of the Lancastrian line and father of the man who had usurped York’ position. Cecily may have been of the ‘usurping’ line but the marriage proved a strong one, based on personal esteem and affection, and she appears to have transferred her loyalties completely to her husband. Reputedly a great beauty, Cecily has gone down in history for her strength of character, her determination and loyalty, and her belief in York’s cause. By the time of their arrival in Rouen, she had already borne a daughter, Anne, in 1439 but had also lost a son, Henry, in February 1441. This lost infant would have been the head of the York family, significantly changing subsequent history, had he survived; the death of an heir in such a dynasty was a great loss but his parents were still young, and able to have more children. Richard and Cecily’s departure for France may even have been delayed while she lay in and recovered from her ordeal. Both the duke and duchess were aware that their children had a triple claim to the throne, stronger than that of the reigning king.
While York was busy governing the region and repelling attacks from the Valois royal family, Cecily was running the household and entertaining guests and dignitaries. Soon after their arrival, she was called upon to act as hostess for the visiting dukes of Brittany and Alençon. The castle would have been run sumptuously, with the best food and wine, linen and table ware, and comfortable furnishings such as the cushioned privy seat Cecily ordered especially for their new home. York’s financier, John Wigmore, also had to settle bills for a gold cup the duchess purchased from a London goldsmith and clothing to the tune of £680.1 It was a proper sense of their social position, a requirement of rank, that prompted the Yorks to live like kings in Rouen. The status-conscious medieval world was accustomed to translate visual symbols of power into actual respect; thus the more opulent a lord and his household the better. Properties, servants and retinue, clothing and jewels, food and hospitality, poise and behaviour were essential tools of the aristocracy. Sometimes those with new money sought to ape such a position, giving rise to sumptuary laws and conflicts between established families and newcomers. It was especially important for the Yorks to be seen to be powerful in France, as seeing was believing. The convincing demonstration of power was power itself. Against the backdrop of the recent bitter conflict, the duke and duchess were effectively king and queen in France.
The Yorks were a very prolific couple. A profusion of heirs was an obvious dynastic advantage, especially as, across the Channel, Henry VI was still in his early twenties and had yet to marry and father a son. Until such time, the Duke of York, as a descendent from a senior bloodline, was effectively his heir. Soon after their arrival in Rouen, Cecily fell pregnant for the third time. She gave birth to Edward on 28 April 1441, who was given a quiet christening, either in one of the castle’s two large chapels, or the smaller one adjoining their private quarters.2 This expediency was probably the result of simple proximity. Perhaps Edward was premature, or else overdue; perhaps the labour was difficult or lengthy. Only fourteen months had elapsed since Cecily had lost her first son during birth or very soon afterwards. It is unlikely that she was prepared to take any risks with Edward’s immortal soul. Swift action in such a case was considered crucial.
In later years, rumours would circulate about the paternity of this new son of York, initiated by his enemies once he had displaced Henry VI and taken the English throne. His low-key christening has also been cited as evidence that he was the product of an adulterous liaison. Yet York never doubted the child’s paternity, which Cecily repeated on her deathbed, when circumstances would have allowed her to maintain a diplomatic silence or piety prompted her to confession. The timing of York’s campaign at Pontoise has been offered as proof that he was not in the city at the time of conception, but this alone is inconclusive, as it does not record Cecily’s whereabouts or take account of the variation in duration of ‘normal’ pregnancies. Just four months after Edward was born, Cecily fell pregnant again. Edmund arrived on 17 May 1443 and was christened in Rouen Cathedral. The fact that Edmund had a grander ceremony than his brother may be due to any number of reasons that are unrecoverable now. Perhaps there was fear of plague in Rouen, or uprisings, or the weather was unseasonable, all of which would have affected the removal of a newborn through the narrow city streets. There is also the possibility that York had already decided that Edward would inherit his titles in England while Edmund continued his work in France, hence his more public reception. Yet the Anglo-French dynamic was to change completely in the coming years.
By the time Edward and Edmund were joined in the Rouen nursery by Elizabeth, a year later, the question of government had already become more complicated for their father. Maintaining law and order in a divided country was costly and difficult. Even before they engaged in any conflict, armies needed to be paid, fed, clothed, sheltered, moved and equipped. On top of this, York had to constantly repel efforts by the Valois and their supporters to encroach upon the ever-shifting borders, with little support from home. The English crown was already in financial difficulties but when Henry decided to allocate more funds to France, they were given instead to John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset to lead an army in Gascony, leaving York to fund his armies and expeditions out of his own pocket. Worse, the Gascon venture failed and the army was forced to return empty-handed to Normandy. When York’s tenure came to an end in 1445, he and his young family returned to England in the expectation of it being renewed. However, it soon became clear that the Yorks were out of favour, losing out to the Lancastrian Beaufort line, with the job being given to Somerset’s younger brother. Settling back into the family properties at Fotheringhay and Ludlow, York felt sidelined and frustrated that someone with his proximity to the throne was not allowed greater influence. By this time the crown owed him over £28 million in today’s currency.
By the end of that year, when he was 2 years old, Edmund was already being formally referred to as the Earl of Rutland. It was a fairly new title, having been created for York’s uncle Edward of Norwich, who no longer needed it once he inherited the family dukedom. York chose to resurrect the title for his second son, possibly as an honour to his uncle, as his elder son Edward had been given the earldom of March. It would also bring rents, revenues and other resources on which Edmund might draw. Rutland itself was a small county in the East Midlands, but Edmund had little actual connection to the place during his lifetime. His investiture was more important for the association it gave him to a hero of Agincourt and demarcated his status within the English aristocracy.
Very little else is known of Edmund’s early life and education beyond that which was dictated by his father’s career. When Edmund was 6, York was appointed Lieutenant of Ireland and sailed from Beaumaris, on the tip of Anglesey, over to Dublin, landing on 6 July 1449. Cecily was definitely with him, but the whereabouts of the two York sons are unclear. Edward and Edmund might have accompanied their parents and stayed in Dublin Castle, taking their lessons behind the solid stone walls overlooking the River Poddle, welcoming their new brother George, who was born in October and visiting Trim at Christmas. The family seem to have been genuinely popular in Ireland, York commanding loyalty from the Irish, and their stay there was a success, but the same question of money plagued them, as King Henry would not grant them enough for their expenses. Equally, this might have been the occasion that prompted the boys’ parents to set them up in their own establishment. At the ages of 6 and 7, Edmund and Edward formed something of a unit, as brothers and friends, who could more easily be left behind than a single child, alone. It was customary among aristocratic families to send children away from home to be raised, or trained, for their future positions and the age of 7 was considered a significant point of transition in childhood development. If this was the case with the Yorks, Edmund would have accompanied his elder brother to Ludlow.
The little Shropshire town on the Welsh Borders would have already been familiar to the two boys. It was the base from which York administered his Welsh estates, where he had a considerable following, holding the title of Earl of March from his Mortimer ancestors. But Ludlow was not just an important administrative centre, its defensive position harked back to earlier conflicts, when the castle dominated the rise of land overlooking the Welsh hills. The town nudged up close to the castle walls, ensuring adequate supplies for the boys’ household as they went about their education and recreation. The castle itself contained an inner bailey with a round chapel, great hall and apartments, and a large outer bailey with service buildings and a gatehouse. Later, Edward would leave strict instructions for the regime of his own son, who was sent to Ludlow at an even younger age. The boy was to follow the usual format of religious devotion and academic study, courtly manners and combat, but must be allowed time for leisure and playing with his dogs. Those who served him were carefully vetted and no bad behaviour was to be tolerated. No doubt York appointed trusted guardians to oversee his sons in his absence. They were being raised to become the great English magnates of the future.
While Edward and Edmund were reading French chronicles and practising their archery, news arrived at the castle of the changing political scene. It seems likely that, given their intended futures, at least some of this information would have been shared with the boys. English territories in France were falling rapidly to the Valois. In April 1450, following a huge victory at the Battle of Formigny, where around 3,500 English were killed or wounded, the French pushed into Normandy, claiming other victories all the way north to Calais. This was a particularly bitter blow, given that York had been passed over for the position of Lieutenant in favour of the Duke of Somerset, whom he now blamed for these losses. It may well have been a defining moment for Edmund too, if his career had been envisioned as part of the long tradition of the English governance of France. The job had long been reserved for the king’s uncles and cousins but, with the empire crumbling, there would soon be nothing for Edmund to govern. With this identity snatched from under his nose, compared with the vast inheritance of his elder brother, his path seemed uncertain. He had been a future ruler of France; he was now merely a younger son. Nothing survives to record his reaction. At 7 years old it was probably less meaningful to him in a real sense, than his close relationship with his brother.
In the spring of 1450, a figure known to history as Jack Cade emerged as the focal point for people’s dissent. Born in the south-east, from the lower class, he voiced their concerns in a manifesto called The Complaint of the Poor Commons of Kent and rallied huge numbers to his side. In late May, the rebels began to march to London and reached Blackheath at the start of June. There they were joined by disgruntled soldiers and sailors returning from the wars, as well as a few members of the middle and upper classes. This would not have directly affected the Duke of York and his family, had Cade not then adopted the name John Mortimer, with its obvious allusions to the rival royal line. This gave rise to rumours that York was in alliance with the rebels, prompting him to write to Henry in earnest from Ireland, assuring him of his loyalty.
The situation in London rapidly escalated. Leaders of the royal army were ambushed and killed, Baron Saye and the Bishop of Salisbury were murdered, then Cade declared himself Lord Mayor. King Henry fled the capital. York hastened back to England, gathering troops in the name of the crown, but also in his own defence, as the king made attempts to intercept him. York and Henry met in London and the duke called for reform and the removal of unpopular royal favourites, such as the Duke of Somerset, whom he considered to have failed the English cause in France. In some quarters this seemed to confirm York’s sympathy with the rebels’ demands. For a brief while, Somerset was imprisoned but, after his release and Cade’s death, York retired to Ludlow and was reunited with his sons. Two years later, when he made another attempt to remove his enemy, Edward and Edmund certainly were informed of his movements. At 10 and 9, they now had a better understanding of the precarious situation their father was in, and Edward at least had been keen to assist York, offering to march to London with 10,000 men and liberate him after he was captured by the king.3
The question of Edmund’s future was settled in 1451, when he was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland by his father, then still holding the Lieutenancy. It was essentially an honorary title for a child, but made clear the direction his father intended for him. Rouen was lost, so Edmund’s future career would be in Dublin. Due to Edmund’s youth, his duties were carried out by Sir Edmund Oldhall, brother of Sir William, who was York’s chamberlain. The Oldhalls were originally a Norfolk-based family, and Sir Edmund was a Carmelite priest and judge, well-placed to fulfil this role until 1454. After that, the role of deputy chancellor was taken over by the Lancastrian John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, further distancing Edmund from his intended path.
The next time Edmund appears in the records is in two letters composed by himself and Edward in the spring and early summer of 1454. Edmund was then approaching, or had just passed, his eleventh birthday and was resident with his brother at Ludlow Castle, whence they wrote to their father. The political situation had changed considerably at court, following King Henry’s lapse into a catatonic state the previous August. During his incapacity, Parliament had continued to rule in his name, employing the great seal which was in the keeping of John Kemp, Archbishop of Canterbury. Kemp’s death in March 1454 meant that this was no longer possible, so Parliament appointed York as Protector of the Realm until Henry’s recovery, despite the protests of his Beaufort opponents. At the time they wrote their letters from Ludlow, there was no guarantee that the king would recover his wits, so York’s appointment took the duke and his sons a step closer to the throne.
The first letter is dated ‘on Saturday in Easter week’, which would have been 20 April, just over two weeks after York’s protectorship began. The boys had been informed by loyal servants of the challenges and successes their father had experienced at court and wrote to wish him ‘honourable conduite and good spede in all your matiers and besynesse, and of your gracious prevaile ayenst thentent and malice of your evilwillers’.4 They also asked for York’s blessing ‘thrugh whiche we trust muche the rather to encrees an growe to vertu, and to spede the better in all matiers and things that we shall use, occupy and exercise’.5 Then, in a little domestic touch that reminds us of their age, they thanked him for sending them some green gowns and requested some new bonnets. It is a letter of two boys aware of their position on the threshold of young adulthood, keen to prepare themselves for the time when they might be of service to their family.
The second letter is dated 3 June, and was written in response to one their father had sent six days before from York. The boys thanked God for York’s ‘worschipful and victorious spede ageniest your enemyse to ther grete shame’ and found these ‘the most comfortable tydinges that we desired to here’.6 They informed their father that they were in good health and were obeying his instructions to ‘attende specially to our lernyng’ in their ‘yong age’ which would cause them to grow in ‘honor and worship’ in their old age. In particular, this second letter gives the sense that both boys were at the beginning of a journey which would propel them into public affairs, the best preparation for which was to study their lessons and observe their father’s example. The emphasis is not on power for its own sake, but on being honourable, on being a good lord, of fulfilment of their birthright as a responsibility rather than a privilege. In 1454, as the two boys signed their names at the bottom of the paper, there was no way of knowing that one of them would complete that journey while the other’s path would be cut short.
Three mentions of the earl in the close rolls from 1456,7 in formal legal documents relating to property, refer to York, Edward and Edmund as a unit, which seems to confirm that the duke was planning to divide his Anglo-Irish responsibilities between them. There was never any suggestion of sidelining Edmund into the Church and no mention in the rolls of the two younger York brothers, who had both been born by this point. Thus the males in the family fell into pairs according to age: Edward and Edmund, who were educated and raised with the intention of fulfilling the duke’s duties in the future, and George and Richard, both still in the nursery in 1454, whose futures may have lain in clerical and administrative fields. Previous royal generations had found roles for clusters of brothers, such as the sons of Edward III and Henry IV, among whom seniority was significant but did not always dictate prosperity and fortune. In this light, the establishment of the two elder York boys at Ludlow would seem a conscious choice to foster ties of friendship and devotion between the brothers and to prevent rivalry. In fact, it would be the absence of Edmund, rather than his presence, that would later confirm just how divisive the English system of primogeniture could prove.
By the late 1450s, relations between the Crown and York were strained to the limit. The Battle of St Albans had given the Yorkists the upper hand, leading to a second Protectorate but, despite various shows of peace, hostilities were brewing between the duke’s faction and the queen’s party. When York and his allies were summoned to attend a Parliament at Coventry in 1459, they correctly suspected their attendance would lead to their arrests, and so stayed away. The extent to which Edward and Edmund were involved is unclear, but both were identified along with their father as rebels, guilty of ‘high treason’ and intent upon ‘raising insurrection’. Now described as the ‘late Earl of Roteland’, Edmund was attainted by an Act of Parliament, meaning that he was deprived of his title and that any manors, estates and lands formerly in his possession were now in the hands of the royal receivers.8 His capture would mean certain death. The brothers chose to fight and that October they were considered old enough, at 17 and 16, to engage in combat alongside their father. Prompted by a surprise attack upon their allies, they rendezvoused just outside the city walls at Ludlow, as the king marched down from the north. No doubt Edmund experienced a mixture of emotions on the eve of his first battle, praying and recalling his martial training, listening to the advice of seasoned campaigners such as York, his Neville cousin the Earl of Warwick, and York’s brother-in-law the Earl of Salisbury. Yet the planned encounter at Ludford Bridge did not take place. Overnight, King Henry was spotted in the opposite camp, causing numbers of York’s followers to desert, fearful of dying a traitor’s death. It was impossible to win on such terms. Under cover of darkness, York and his sons took the difficult decision to flee the country. For the first time, the brothers were divided: Edward went to Calais with Warwick and Edmund accompanied York to Ireland.
It was a wise move to go to Ireland, where Henry had no real jurisdiction. Ten years after his first visit, York was still the country’s Lieutenant and had retained the support of its Parliament, including the influential FitzGerald family and their adherents. The Sixth Earl of Desmond, James FitzGerald, had even been chosen by York as godfather to his son George back in 1449. Edmund only just missed meeting his deputy, Edmund Oldhall, who had died that August and now the youth was able to take over the position for himself. A few records survive from transactions made by the duke during this time, including the reward of loyal Yorkist Sir James Pickering, who was appointed Clerk of the Common Pleas and ‘searcher’ of customs at the ports of Dublin and Drogheda that November.9
On 7 February 1460, York summoned Parliament to meet at Drogheda, in a session which ran until 21 July. Two weeks after the summons, the duke formally confirmed the full-time appointment of Edmund as Chancellor of Ireland, ‘to exercise the office in person or by his sufficient deputy for whom he is willing to answer, taking yearly the accustomed fees, wages and rewards, profits and commodities, due and accustomed to that office of old’. During York’s rule, the Irish Parliament took the significant step of declaring itself legally independent from England, its subjects bound only to follow the laws and statutes of ‘the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Common of Ireland, freely admitted and accepted in their Parliaments and Great Councils’. This effectively made York King of Ireland. Any officials attempting to enforce decrees from Henry VI would lose their land and face a fine. One of the assembly’s final actions was taken in response to news that Edward, Warwick and Salisbury had returned from Calais and won a decisive victory at Northampton. The death of York’s enemy John Talbot, Second Earl of Shrewsbury, allowed the duke to reassign his lands in County Wexford, granting them to Patrick Ketyng and James Prendergast.10
York and Edmund might have remained indefinitely in Ireland, where they were as good as kings. In time, Edmund might have become the country’s sole leader and built on York’s foundation with the long-standing support of its aristocracy. His year in Ireland would have established and cemented his position as his father’s heir in the country, in preparation for his future government. Yet the Yorks’ bloodline placed them so close to the English throne that at times it must have felt as if it was at their fingertips. With Edward’s conquest changing the political climate in London, the way was clear for York to formulate a new plan. His position of authority, almost regality, in Ireland gave him a new determination and it is likely that he took Edmund into his confidence. On 9 September, York and Edmund landed in Wales. As they rode east, York commanded that a drawn sword be carried before him, in the tradition of kings. When they arrived at Westminster, on 10 October, the duke laid claim to the English throne by right of conquest.
York’s actions took Edward, Warwick and the English lords by surprise. Henry VI had been captured after the Battle of Northampton and returned to Westminster where he was, once again, the puppet of the Yorkist faction. As far as the duke was concerned, the attainder of 1459 made his former position untenable, so seizing the throne was justifiable as a defensive act. How Edmund reacted to this decision is unclear. It may have been something his father discussed with him, and which Edmund approved. The English lords, however, disapproved. Their compromise was the Act of Accord, passed on 25 October, by which Henry retained the throne for the duration of his life but York was named as his heir, after which the crown would pass to Edward and Edmund. They were given incomes in accordance with their new status and it became a treasonable offence to conspire against, attack or kill them. Henry VI’s son, the 7-year-old Edward of Westminster, was excluded from the succession, which York must have known would not be accepted by the queen. York might now have the protection of the law but it would not be enough to save his life.
Edmund’s position had now changed considerably. After the initial switch in direction from France to Ireland, it seemed that his life would be spent in the governance of English territories abroad, in service to a Lancastrian king. The Act of Accord changed everything. Edmund was now third in line to the throne, after his father and brother. If the terms of the Act were adhered to, there was a reasonable chance that Edward would inherit, but if he were to die in battle, of illness or without issue, Edmund would become England’s king. For a few weeks that autumn, stability and hope returned for the York family, who finally believed they had been restored to their rightful position. That November, Edmund received a bequest in the will of Sir William Oldhall, brother of his deputy in Ireland, Sir Edmund. William had been attainted for aiding and abetting the Yorkist uprising of 1459 and died the following November. While Edward was left a grey walking horse, Edmund got the value of the horse in money.11
Soon, it became apparent that there were still battles to be won. The Act of Accord had settled certain questions but it had raised others and Queen Margaret was raising an army in the north on behalf of her disinherited son. That December the York party divided again: Edward went west to intercept the arrival of the king’s half-brother, Jasper Tudor; Warwick stayed in London to guard Henry; while York, Edmund and Salisbury headed north with a commission of array, a group of men needed for recruiting purposes, which may have only numbered a few hundred.12 Again, Edmund was partnered with his father while Edward acted independently. Separating the two brothers is likely to have been a precautionary measure, to prevent the capture of both heirs, but it also indicates that Edward was considered to have come to maturity and, perhaps shows an ease or connection between Edmund and his father. They encountered appalling weather on the way north, which caused flooding and unpassable roads, and their troops were ambushed on at least one occasion. With Edmund were two other young men, Salisbury’s son Thomas and his son-in-law Thomas Harrington, who was 18. There was also Sir Thomas Parre, who had been in exile with Edward, and Sir James Pickering, who had been in Ireland with York and Edmund. On 21 December, twelve days after leaving London, they arrived at Sandal Castle, on the edge of Wakefield in Yorkshire.
Edmund, York and their party spent the Christmas period at Sandal, aware that some of the queen’s forces were in the vicinity. They may have believed that the Act would protect them, or that a truce negotiated to cover the festive season would be honoured. On 30 December, perhaps in need of more supplies, they ventured out of the castle and encountered a large army waiting for them in the surrounding forest, led by the son of York’s great enemy, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. The details of the battle are not known, as no contemporary account survives, but York was killed in the fighting, Salisbury captured and beheaded, and Edmund was killed about a mile away from Sandal Castle. He was 17. The chronicles offer differing accounts of his final moments, but none of the writers had been present to witness his death and some were writing centuries after the event.
There is no doubt that Edmund would have fought bravely and well. He had been trained to do so. The one contemporary writer who would have seen him in person was William Gregory, Lord Mayor of London 1451–52, who was aged around 60 at the time of the battle. He described Edmund as ‘one of the best disposed Lords in the land’ when it came to the use of arms.13 Most other accounts agree that the earl was dispatched by John, Lord Clifford, later known as ‘the butcher’ for his actions, in revenge for York’s killing of his father at St Albans in 1455. Two other contemporaries, William Worcester and the author of The English Chronicle, simply state the fact of Edmund’s death, without detail. Writing around eighty years after the battle, chronicler Edward Hall makes one major error in getting Edmund’s age wrong. Believing him to be 12 rather than 17, Hall wove a scene of great pathos and sentiment, which has coloured interpretations of the event ever since: the child Edmund kneels, ‘a fair gentleman and maiden-like in person … imploring mercy and benefitting grace, both with holding up his hands and making dolorous countenance’. His chaplain pleads for him but Clifford ‘struck the earl to the heart with his dagger’ and made the priest take the news to his mother. It is more likely that Edmund had fought his way out of Sandal and met the 25-year-old Clifford in an evenly matched encounter.
Most accounts agree that Edmund died on or near the bridge over the River Calder about a mile to the north of the battle site. He may have been trying to reach the safety of Wakefield and the sanctuary of St Mary the Virgin’s Chantry Chapel, which sat midway along the bridge. The Elizabethan antiquarian John Leland visited the site in 1544 and wrote that Edmund had actually died a little above the barres or gate, beyond the bridge, ‘going up a clymyng ground’ into the town. He drew on what appears to have been an oral tradition, recording that ‘the commune saying is that the Erle wold have taken ther a poore woman’s house for sucore and she for fere shet the dore and strait the erle was killid.’14
Later writers have located the site of Edmund’s death further on, near a medieval building called the Six Chimneys at the bottom of Kirkgate, although some reached that conclusion centuries after the event. The difference is a distance of around a third of a mile, along the route of the present A61, which is quite compatible with a drawn-out chase from the chapel, perhaps with the mortal wound inflicted at one location and the finality of death lagging a little behind. Wherever his killing took place, the end result was the same. Shortly afterwards, Edmund’s corpse was decapitated, just as those of York, Salisbury and others had been, as a warning to their allies, and their heads were displayed upon Micklegate Bar in York. They remained in place until Edward was in a position to order their removal, when they were interred at nearby Pontefract Abbey. Clifford was killed on 28 March 1461, shortly before Edward’s decisive victory at the Battle of Towton.
In February 1462, Edward, now King Edward IV, honoured his father and brother in a way that illustrates an aspect of late medieval piety. The living could undertake or instigate a range of acts which were designed to commemorate the memory of loved ones, offset the nature of their deaths and speed their journey through purgatory. This had the added advantage of casting spiritual merit upon the benefactor, not just in the eyes of the community, or justification for the new regime, but as a mark in their favour against the moment of spiritual reckoning. Acts of honour might be carried out by the individual themselves, such as a pilgrimage or even an act of penance, but it was more often through the bequest of money for the creation of a tomb or the establishment of regular masses or an obit, which were prayers to be said on the anniversary of the departure of the deceased. Edward chose to continue his father’s work at Fotheringhay by completing the college begun by their ancestor, Edward, Duke of York, the new king’s great uncle, hero of Agincourt, from whom they had inherited the title:
Considering the zeal of Edward, late Duke of York, in the foundation of a college at Foderinghay [sic] on a site of six acres in his demesne there, for a master, twelve chaplains, eight clerks and thirteen choristers or a smaller number, there to celebrate for his soul and those of his progenitors and heirs, the King desiring from pious motives to complete this foundation … to celebrate for the souls of his progenitors, for his happy state during his life and for that of his mother, Cecily, Duchess of York, and for the health of his own soul after death … Richard, Duke of York, the King’s father, true heir of the realms of England and France and the Lordship of Ireland, and of Edmund, late Earl of Rutland the King’s brother … and all of the King’s progenitors and all of the faithful departed. 15
Edward appointed a Thomas Buxhale to be master of the college and granted him six acres for the building of dwellings necessary for those employed in the establishment, supported by revenues from lands and other existing religious foundations.16
On 20 July 1463, Edward established obits to be said for his father and brother by harnessing a former Lancastrian pious foundation. Having deposed Henry VI, who was then a fugitive in the north, Edward had no qualms about building on the former king’s patronage for St Peter’s Church, Westminster, as a Lancastrian location for devotion to the soul and memory of Henry V. Perhaps Edward meant this as a conciliatory gesture, using religion to span the divide between opposing dynasties. Given Henry VI’s notorious piety, the former king may have been pleased to hear that the devotions to his father were being respected, not neglected, in the spirit that all enemies were equal in death. He had also had a particular affiliation for St Peter. However, Edward went further and ordered that prayers be said for ‘the good estate of the present king and of his mother Cecily, Duchess of York, during life and for their souls after death, and may also celebrate and observe an anniversary for the souls of the illustrious prince Richard, Duke of York, and the mighty lords Edmund, Duke of Rutland, and Richard, Earl of Salisbury’, on 30 December, with a mass the following day.17 It is difficult to know quite what Henry VI thought of the harnessing of his piety and ancestry to the memories of those who had fought against him. He was hardly in a position to do anything about it, but there does seem to have been a universal respect for the dead, even if they had been one’s opponents in life, a sort of superstition about their influence and the harm that could come from speaking ill or them or damaging their memory. This was typical of late medieval piety and would not be challenged on a large scale until the iconoclasm of the Reformation seven decades later.
It was not until 1476 that Edward arranged for the removal of his father and brother from Pontefract to Fotheringhay where, initially, York was buried in the choir and Edmund in the Lady Chapel. The event was witnessed by Thomas Whiting, a herald, who left a detailed account of the magnificent proceedings:
On 24 July [1476] the bodies were exhumed, that of the Duke, ‘garbed in an ermine furred mantle and cap of maintenance, covered with a cloth of gold’ lay in state under a hearse blazing with candles, guarded by an angel of silver, bearing a crown of gold as a reminder that by right the Duke had been a King. On its journey, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, with other lords and officers of arms, all dressed in mourning, followed the funeral chariot, drawn by six horses, with trappings of black, charged with the arms of France and England and preceded by a knight bearing the banner of the ducal arms. Fotheringhay was reached on 29 July, where members of the college and other ecclesiastics went forth to meet the cortege. At the entrance to the churchyard, King Edward waited, together with the Duke of Clarence, the Marquis of Dorset, Earl Rivers, Lord Hastings and other noblemen. Upon its arrival the King ‘made obeisance to the body right humbly and put his hand on the body and kissed it, crying all the time.’ The procession moved into the church where two hearses were waiting, one in the choir for the body of the Duke and one in the Lady Chapel for that of the Earl of Rutland, and after the King had retired to his ‘closet’ and the princes and officers of arms had stationed themselves around the hearses, masses were sung and the King’s chamberlain offered for him seven pieces of cloth of gold ‘which were laid in a cross on the body.’ The next day three masses were sung, the Bishop of Lincoln preached a ‘very noble sermon’ and offerings were made by the Duke of Gloucester and other lords, of ‘The Duke of York’s coat of arms, of his shield, his sword, his helmet and his coursers on which rode Lord Ferrers in full armour, holding in his hand an axe reversed.’ When the funeral was over, the people were admitted into the church and it is said that before the coffins were placed in the vault which had been built under the chancel, five thousand persons came to receive the alms, while four times that number partook of the dinner, served partly in the castle and partly in the King’s tents and pavilions. The menu included capons, cygnets, herons, rabbits and so many good things that the bills for it amounted to more than three hundred pounds.
A list of the burials at Pontefract, compiled in 1504 by John Wriothesley, states that the Duke of York’s heart remained there when his bones were translated to Fotheringhay. This was not unusual, as the internal organs were removed during the embalming process and sometimes stored separately in urns, which might allow for burial elsewhere, especially if there had been several locations of significance during the life of the deceased. The same went for Edmund’s heart, although his ties to Pontefract were not particularly strong in comparison with Fotheringhay or Ludlow. It may have been a practical question of accessing the organs in 1476, if they had been sealed in stone or in an inaccessible part of the abbey. The medieval belief in the final day of judgement encompassed the idea that all the body parts of an individual would be reunited as a prerequisite for their endowment with eternal life. No details survive about the original tombs of Richard or Edmund. The abbey at Pontefract was completely destroyed during the Reformation and the tombs at Fotheringhay were disfigured. During the reign of York’s great-great-granddaughter, Elizabeth I, the remains were moved again from the choir and Lady Chapel and placed in a communal vault under a new alabaster memorial.
It is only hindsight that allows us to consider Edmund’s death in terms of the absence of the individual. Without speculating what kind of Lieutenant of Ireland he might have made, or even what manner of king he could potentially have become, it is possible to examine what actually did happen as a result of his death. And what happened was that his mantle fell to his next York brother in line, George. After Edward became king in 1461, the 11-year-old George stepped into Edmund’s position as his heir. He was also granted the Lieutenancy of Ireland, and appears in the Parliament records in that capacity as early as October 1462. Given George’s age, his godfather’s son, Thomas FitzGerald, Seventh Earl of Desmond, acted as his deputy, continuing those ties of loyalty that had been established by York and Edmund. George’s influence is also suggested in a 1463 grant to the inhabitants of Ireland’s Dungarvan giving them the same rights as the inhabitants of Clare in Suffolk, as Clare was the town whence the dukedom of Clarence originally derived.18
Initially, all seemed to be going well, one brother seamlessly replaced by another. On 24 February 1464, the Irish Parliament wrote to Edward in praise of George as Lieutenant, who was fulfilling his father’s memory:
Advertisyng your highnesse of the full grete and notable service that your faithful subject and true liege man or especiale good Lord your most derrest Brothir of Clarence lieutenant of this your land of Irland hath dooun as well unto your highnesse as to the Right noble and famouse Prince your fadre of blessed memorie whom god Rest of the importable charges and costes by the same depute aswel afore thoffice of depute lieutenancy of this your said land as after unto the said Erle committed hath daily susteined he there of not failing but daily continuyng his faithful service right ordinate and worshipfull at al tymes.19
In 1464, the 15-year-old George was clearly a loyal adherent of his elder brother, Ireland and the Yorkist dynastic cause. Yet everything would change later that year, when Edward made an unpopular marriage and tensions began to appear in his court that would lead, in time, to George rebelling against his brother. Until Edward fathered a legitimate son of his own, which did not happen until November 1470, George was next in line to the throne. When George joined Warwick to rise against Edward in 1469–70, it was to challenge his brother’s authority; to depose and kill him may not have been his initial intention. Angered that Edward had vetoed an important marriage for him, George absconded to Calais, where he married Warwick’s daughter and, along with the earl, cast aspersions upon Edward’s legitimacy. At first Edward could not believe that his brother was acting against him, but George’s flight and the issue of a rebel manifesto from Calais confirmed his treachery. This was the moment that clarified just how much Edward had lost an important ally and support in Edmund.
Despite this, when George and Warwick’s coup foundered, they were forgiven and the brothers were briefly reconciled. Yet George was not content and, following a second rebellion, Edward was deposed in favour of the Lancastrian Henry VI and forced into exile. Although Edward returned and reclaimed his throne six months later, killing Warwick in the process, he was not prepared to afford his errant brother any more chances. Five years later, George’s repeated challenges and erratic behaviour prompted his brother to sign his death warrant. It is not possible to know what position Edmund would have taken as his brothers clashed and threatened the stability of the realm but his former closeness to Edward might suggest where his loyalties would have lain. It is not unfeasible to imagine that Edmund could have provided an anchor for George, keeping him grounded, curtailing his ambition. If nothing else, his mere existence would have removed the very impetus of George’s claim, as any doubts concerning Edward’s fitness to rule would have simply turned the spotlight upon Edmund rather than George. He could not have realistically argued that both his elder brothers were illegitimate. There would have been no point in George’s rebellion had Edmund still been alive. Edmund’s death put the throne within George’s reach. His unrealised career and actions cannot be imagined, but his absence allowed the advancement of a man whose ambition and instability ultimately proved fatal.
It is tempting, with hindsight, to preserve Edmund as the figure of Yorkist salvation, the buffer between the early years and the Edwardian disintegration and reign of the final brother, Richard III. Knowing the tragic path Edward’s relationship with George would take, and that the former would die a premature death and his sons be lost in the Tower, Edmund emerges like a shining beacon of lost Yorkist opportunity, the piece in the jigsaw that would have ensured continuing dynastic dominance and serene Yorkist rule into the next century. Obviously, Edmund’s life is too narrow a pin upon which to hang such fabulous visions but this possibility illustrates the very real dangers of interpreting history. He might have been all this, and equally, he might not. But this is a very human failing. The romantic trap of recovering the dead as final solutions, as retrospective answers to unfathomable problems is not just a modern phenomenon. In every chantry tomb, every lit candle, every remembrance day feast, medieval memorial had an aspect of lost potential, forever idealised as it was eternally unrealised. No wonder the fascination with, and attachment to, those who die young continues.
Shortly after the final translation of the earl’s bones to Fotheringhay, Shakespeare portrayed the deaths of York and Edmund at Wakefield in Henry VI Part III. The impact of such a scene, frequently enacted upon the stage to a wide audience, had the effect of countering other narratives with a sympathetic popular history of the event, which would shape the subsequent artistic interpretations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Apart from the obvious inaccuracies of placing Edward and a highly precocious 8-year-old Richard at the scene, Shakespeare creates a scene of pathos between Edmund and Clifford with the metaphor of a lion bent over its prey as the youth pleads for his life:
So looks the pent-up lion o’er the wretch
That trembles under his devouring paws;
And so he walks, insulting o’er his prey,
And so he comes, to rend his limbs asunder.
Ah, gentle Clifford, kill me with thy sword,
And not with such a cruel threatening look.
Sweet Clifford, hear me speak before I die.
I am too mean a subject for thy wrath:
Be thou revenged on men, and let me live.
At this critical moment, it is the awareness of ancestry, of recent and past deaths, that shapes the mood. Clifford’s immortal justification that Edmund’s ‘father slew my father’ makes the murder an act of honour to avenge his family, and one that will allow the soul of his father to rest more easily. Yet this murder of an ‘innocent’ was contrary to Church teaching, as Edmund’s tutor asserts in the play, promising that the Clifford would be ‘hated both of God and man’. This seems to represent a religious struggle between the concepts of honour and ‘good’ acts in the name of the dead; the interpretation of dynastic duty which can seem incompatible with piety to a modern audience. To avenge and honour a loss was admirable, but not when the victim was as young as Shakespeare portrayed Edmund, or when it invoked further bloodshed. Rutland himself tells Clifford that he should take his revenge to York, who was a fully-grown man, and the author of his loss.
Clifford’s response inverts the notion of suffering in hell for his deed: until his revenge is enacted, he is experiencing a hell upon earth. His graphic, grisly imagery of digging up the bones of Edmund’s ancestors is a reminder that remains could be subject to acts of desecration as well as veneration, but this was so socially unacceptable that, setting the imminent murder aside, it establishes Clifford in the minds of the audience as a damned villain:
Had thy brethren here, their lives and thine
Were not revenge sufficient for me;
No, if I digg’d up thy forefathers’ graves
And hung their rotten coffins up in chains,
It could not slake mine ire, nor ease my heart.
The sight of any of the house of York
Is as a fury to torment my soul;
And till I root out their accursed line
And leave not one alive, I live in hell.
As Clifford’s opposite, as his literary foil, Edmund counters the lord’s damnation with his own imminent salvation, begging to be allowed to pray, thus easing the path to heaven. He appeals to Clifford for the sake of future generations, not past ones, reminding him that he has a son and, as God is just, that son will surely be taken from him. Edmund’s final words are in Latin; ‘Di faciant laudis summa sit ista tuae!’ (May the Gods grant that this be your crowning praise!). The use of the language of the Church establishes a link between the youth and divinity, suggestive of his imminent salvation. The audience has no doubt where Lord Clifford is bound.
Centuries after his death, Edmund was claimed by art as something of a romantic hero, a cause célèbre which exaggerated his innocence and the pathos of his demise. Many artists took their cue from Shakespeare. In 1800, an edition of Henry VI Part III was illustrated by Scottish artist Robert Ker Porter, including an image of Edmund’s death. Kneeling, the earl clasps his hands in supplication, appearing simultaneously childlike and robust, well rounded and sturdy beside Clifford, whose billowing cloak, fashionable boots and headdress depict him as something of a rake. It is not an image that evinces great sympathy, despite Edmund’s cowering. The crudeness of translation from image to engraving and the depiction of the victim lose something of an aesthetic battle in the viewer’s eye.
The same year as Waterloo, 1815, genre painter and Royal Academician Charles Robert Leslie’s iconic picture foregrounded a child-like Edmund with long blonde curls, dressed in pearly white and gold, far closer to a boy of 12 than a young man of 17. In contrasting chiaroscuro shades of black and gold, Clifford stands over the boy, wearing full armour, with a rippling red sash intimating the violent spillage of blood to follow. Kneeling upon the ground, hands clasped in prayer, Edmund’s head is held back by his enemy, revealing angelic features and wide eyes. Tucked beneath him, his childish legs and little soft shoes fastened by a strap are passive beside Clifford’s great thigh, metallic and almost serpent-like in its scaly decoration. With his dagger poised, his visor raised to reveal brutal features, this enemy of innocence and religion is as terrifying as a Caravaggio killer or a Fuseli nightmare. The skies behind him broil in a menacing mix of pink and grey as if the very heavens disapprove. It is a scene designed to tug the heartstrings, to overplay the emotional response in contrast with the facts such as they can be established. As a piece of art, it is a success, it achieves its aim and, although exaggerated, it foregrounds Edward’s loss in a way that historians had failed to do at that point.
Leslie’s pathos found a receptive audience in the Victorians. Two texts of the 1870s retold Edmund’s story as part of a wider narrative of Irish rule. James Roderick O’Flanagan reminds us that Edmund was also Earl of Cork and gave a positive account of York’s tenure as Lieutenant, giving ‘Early indications of a better policy towards the Irish than was usually observed’ and ‘employing the arts of peace’ instead of ‘attacking the native chiefs’. He was so popular that it was said that ‘the wildest Irishman in Ireland would, before twelve months, be sworn English’, and he endeared himself ‘not only to the English in Ireland but the natives’. At the time of the Battle of Wakefield, Flanagan portrays Edmund as having ‘a fair and almost effeminate appearance’ and ‘a brave and intrepid spirit’. Needless to say, this is something of a romanticisation and may have been prompted by Leslie’s picture, as no contemporary images of Edmund survive, nor do any suggestions that he was in any way effeminate. Flanagan has Edmund taken prisoner by Clifford, who was unaware of his identity until it was revealed by ‘the richness of his armour and equipment’, prompting the lord to drive his dagger into his heart.20 In his 1879 book on the lives of the Irish Chancellors, Oliver J. Burke also described Edmund’s identification by his ‘noble appearance’, as well as the pleas of his chaplain and the moment when Clifford ‘rushed on the hapless youth’ and struck him in the heart, repeating the lines attributed to the Lancastrian by Shakespeare. In Henry VI Part III, Burke’s evocative account has him die ‘in the flower of his youth’.21
The loss of Edmund, Earl of Rutland, Chancellor of Ireland and Earl of Cork sent ripples through history that underpinned his brother’s reign. Had he still been alive in April 1483, at the age of 40, he would have been faced with the question of loyalties that defined the reign of his third brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Should he support his 12-year-old nephew as Edward V or attempt to claim the throne for himself? Yet the attempts to discredit the boy had arisen through George’s rebellion, so the likelihood is that the child would have been untainted, and ascended the throne. Edmund might have ruled Ireland, or attempted to regain England’s foothold in France, or perhaps even taken the role of Protector towards his young king, ensuring the survival of Edward V. Today, Edmund lies with his parents behind the central limestone and chalk façades that flank the altar. His contribution to the House of York was brief but complete and his lost potential forever a cause for speculation.