When the Duke of York’s eldest son, Edward, Earl of March displaced Henry VI in 1461, he was 18 years old. Tall, handsome and athletic, in contrast with the pious, conscientious and mentally fragile Lancastrian, Edward looked the part, fighting at the forefront of his troops, dressing in gorgeous colours and fabrics, dazzling with jewels and quickly establishing a reputation as a devotee of women. After forty years of Henry VI’s rule, Edward IV was the perfect foil for his opponent, and his attraction lay partly in this difference. His reign began in a blaze of military and chivalric glory, as he followed his devastating victory at Towton with not just one coronation, but three. On 28 June, he was crowned in the traditional way at Westminster Abbey, but to his superstitious contemporaries, Sunday was considered an unlucky day, so he returned on the Monday for another crown-wearing ceremony. The day after that, Tuesday 30 June, Edward was at St Paul’s Cathedral, which was larger and could accommodate an audience of his subjects, summoned to witness the crown being lowered into place again. He was a man who understood the importance of ceremony and had a wide appeal for the citizens of London.
It was expected that Edward would make an important international marriage. A wife with powerful European connections would cement his position in financial, commercial and military terms, to secure the house of York’s new hold upon the throne. Such a match would deter Lancastrian challenges, but it was also the logical next step of his family’s evolution. Even during Edward’s youth, his father had intended him to marry into royal blood, believing it commensurate with his family’s ancient right and their projected future. While still resident in Normandy, back in the mid-1440s, the duke had made overtures to Charles VII of France, in an attempt to win the hand of Madeline or Joan, princesses of the Valois line, for his son. The little girls had been 2 and 10 at the time, but had both since been married and were out of Edward’s reach by 1464. However, their brother was now king and his second wife, Charlotte of Savoy, had an unmarried sister. Thus, a delegation led by the Earl of Warwick crossed the Channel to forge a union with the 14-year-old Bona, whose eighteen siblings would have afforded the Yorkists support in places as widespread as Geneva, Cyprus, Milan, Luxembourg, Brittany and Scotland. This was a popular choice at court, if not only to secure peace, but to curb the young king’s roving eye. As William Gregory’s chronicle relates, the royal advisors had implored him to send ‘into some strange land to enquire for a queen of good birth, according unto his dignity’, just as his Lancastrian predecessors had done.
When Edward’s second Parliament met at Reading in September 1464, it was in expectation of hearing the treaty concluded and to make plans for a royal wedding. Instead, Edward took the opportunity to inform the assembled lords that he was already married. His new wife, Elizabeth Woodville, could not be faulted in terms of her beauty, but she was a widow with two young sons from a large Lancastrian family. She could bring Edward nothing in terms of international relations, but this clearly mattered little to the king, who had chosen her for her personal qualities alone. It was another sign that Edward intended to reign on his own terms, rather than conforming to expectations. Yet the question of motivation when it came to the marriage still causes controversy today. Clearly Edward fell in love with Elizabeth, or in lust,1 but the choice to wed her in secret might betray more than a straightforward concern about his minister’s disapproval. Two decades later, Richard III would argue that Edward had been precontracted to another woman, rendering his match with Elizabeth illegal and their children unlawful. It is also not entirely out of character that Edward made promises to at least one woman in order to bed her, but found himself caught on this occasion. The secret ceremony is reputed to have taken place on or around May Day, at the Woodville’s Northamptonshire estate of Grafton Regis. Whatever the king’s motives on that occasion, five months later he chose Elizabeth to be his queen. She was presented at court and crowned in Westminster Abbey on 26 May 1465.
The marriage rapidly produced three children. Elizabeth gave birth to a girl named after her in February 1466, followed by Mary in August 1467 and Cecily in March 1469. What Edward most needed though, was a son to secure his dynasty. Until a boy arrived, his heir was George, Duke of Clarence, who had already been inspired to rebel by this fact. When George joined forces with Warwick for the second time in the summer of 1470, when Edward of Lancaster was betrothed to Anne Neville and Margaret of Anjou was planning her return, Queen Elizabeth was pregnant with her fourth child. That September, Edward was hurrying south to repel his enemies when he was taken unawares by the defection of Warwick’s brother, and forced to flee at once into Burgundy, to save his life. There was no time to say goodbye to his wife and daughters, whom he hoped would be safe in the Tower of London. At the start of October, Elizabeth had just four weeks left until her delivery, which was the traditional time that a queen would have formally entered her confinement. Her rooms in the Tower had been prepared and provisioned for her lying-in, but now her circumstances had changed dramatically and she had no idea whether Edward would return, be killed in battle or drown in the turbulent conditions of the North Sea. At this point, Henry VI was still resident in the Tower, and Elizabeth realised that the Tower would become a focal point for her enemies. On the night of 1 October, she fled with her three daughters and mother to the safety of Westminster Abbey, where they signed the register as ‘sanctuary women’.
The conditions in which the women found themselves were far from what they had been used to in the palace nearby. The abbot offered Elizabeth rooms in the Deanery, but the surrounding area was crammed full of poor tenements bordering Thieving Lane, potentially home to common criminals seeking to escape the law. The poem ‘The Recovery of the Throne by Edward IV’ describes her ‘in langowr and angwiche … to here of hir wepyng it was grett pity’, while Thomas More claimed that she was ‘in great penury and forsaken of all friends’.2 Yet she had not moved a moment too soon. Warwick arrived at the Tower just a day or two later and moved Henry VI into the very apartments Elizabeth had vacated. As ever, though, the Lancastrian king was inclined to mercy, issuing a proclamation forbidding any man to ‘defoul or distrouble’ those within the Tower, on pain of death. He also appointed Lady Scrope, a doctor and midwife, to attend Elizabeth, and allowed John Gould, a London butcher, to supply the family with meat. On 2 November, the queen gave birth to a son, whom she named Edward. His godparents were among those who shared his sanctuary: the abbot Thomas Milling, the prior John Eastney and Lady Scrope. As the Croyland Chronicle relates, ‘those faithful to King Edward drew some consolation from the event,’ while the more numerous Lancastrians thought it ‘of no importance’.3
Baby Edward spent his first six months at Westminster, then his existence and status changed completely. In the spring of 1471, his father returned from exile and made his way to London on the pretext of wishing to regain his father’s former title of Duke of York. Arriving in the city on 11 April, he returned to the scenes of his coronation: St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, where he gave thanks and revealed his true hand by having himself recrowned by Cardinal Bourchier.4 There, Elizabeth presented to him ‘a fair son, a Prince, to the King’s greatest joy, to his heart’s singular comfort and gladness, and to all them that truly loved and served him’. He was reunited with his daughters too, and did ‘full tenderly’ kiss his ‘sweet babes’ and bore his son in his arms. As the Arrivall relates, all his sorrow ‘was turned to bliss’. The family moved to Baynard’s Castle on the Thames, a large fortified Yorkist possession between Blackfriars and Queenhithe. Edward went on to regain control of his kingdom, killing the Earl of Warwick at Barnet and Prince Edward of Lancaster at Tewkesbury and ordering the death of Henry VI.
On 11 June 1471, baby Edward was formally created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester at Westminster Palace, ‘with the assent of the lords of our blood’. He was later assigned the dukedom of Cornwall with its corresponding lands and estates, as well as his own household, with council, Chamberlain Thomas Vaughan, Chancellor Abbot Milling and Steward Lord Dacre, along with the traditional employees of the royal nursery. His nurse was Avice Welles, who is likely to have suckled the prince for two years, before being given a tun of red Gascon wine in November 1472 as severance payment.5 On 3 July, the king summoned a meeting of the great council, whose members, following the lead of the Archbishop of Canterbury, swore an oath of allegiance to the new prince. Thomas Bourchier’s promise acknowledged the ‘first begotten son of our sovereign lord … to be the true and undoubted heir to our said sovereign, as to the crowns and realms of England and of France and the lordship of Ireland’. In addition, the lords swore that if it was the will of God that the prince should outlive his father, they would ‘then take and accept you for true, very and righteous King of England … and in all things truly and faithfully behave me towards you and your heir’.6 The prince’s uncles, George and Richard, were among the forty-six men present at this council meeting and signed the oath with their own hands.
Edward’s power and importance continued to grow, despite his young age. The following April he was made a knight of the garter at the annual Windsor ceremony, receiving the honours at the hand of his father. That September he was brought into the presence of a special visitor, his father’s ally-in-exile, Louis de Gruuthuyse, who was a guest at Winsdor Castle, in order to bid him welcome. Edward’s biographer Michael Hicks states that the child had probably ‘not yet learned to talk’7 but at two months off his second birthday, the prince would have been capable of offering a greeting. He would also have been interested in the gift his parents bestowed upon their friend, a jewelled gold cup containing a fragment of ‘unicorn’s’ horn. The boy was present as the company processed in their robes to Westminster Abbey to make offerings at the shrine of St Edward, although on this occasion he was carried by his chamberlain Thomas Vaughan. One surviving clothing account for him, the only one, lists a long gown of cloth of gold on damask worth £1, doublets of velvet and satin, and two bonnets, one of which was purple velvet lined with green satin.8 His father understood the importance of maintaining regal magnificence, in the Burgundian style, as a crucial demonstration of influence and power. There would have been many other gowns, doublets and bonnets ordered for the future king.
The year 1473 was to prove significant for the young prince. His council was enlarged, and charged to manage his affairs until he reached the age of 14. Among its members were his mother Queen Elizabeth, the archbishop, his paternal uncles, his maternal uncle Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, and Chancellor Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells. That September, when Edward was just 3, plans were made for the establishment of his own household at Ludlow Castle, in the Shropshire town on the Welsh Borders. A list of ordinances was created by his father, outlining the boy’s routine, education, rules of the house and job descriptions for employees. The cultured and chivalric Anthony Woodville was appointed as his master, or governor, to guide him in ‘truth, honour, cunning, virtue and knightly demeaning’ and to ‘oversee that all [Edward’s] servants now being and hereafter do duly and truly their service and office’. Dr John Alcock, Bishop of Rochester was charged to ‘teach and inform our said son in all spiritual cunning and virtue’ and replaced Milling as chancellor, while John Giles was given the specific job of teaching him Latin. The young prince’s day began with Matins in his chamber, followed by breakfast, mass and lessons. At dinner, he was to be served meat while listening to ‘noble stories’ before returning to more learning. Afterwards he was allowed some playtime in the form of ‘disports and exercises’, or playing with his pets, games and sports, before supper and evensong in his chamber. A final session of recreation was intended to make him ‘joyous and merry’ before he retired to bed at eight in the evening.9 But Edward was not always at Ludlow from this point, as he frequently travelled with his family, visiting Coventry in April 1474, where he was presented with a gilt cup decorated with allegorical figures including Edward the Confessor and St George, and appearing at Windsor that May.
Early in 1475, when the king was planning an invasion of France, this council would have stepped in to supervise the boy even more closely. The prince was knighted at Westminster on 18 April, along with his younger brother Richard of Shrewsbury, who had arrived two years before, along with a number of other peers and boys his age, establishing ties of loyalty. This was a significant moment for Edward, as his father’s absence encompassed certain responsibilities that would be undertaken in his name, and the possibility that the king’s death in battle, at sea or through that traditional scourge of the English in France, dysentery, would propel his son onto the throne. That July, the prince was at Westminster to be appointed Keeper of the Realm until the king’s return; this made him the nominal head of government, whose authority would be exercised by his mother. As such it was essential that he was present in London and Elizabeth was allocated an additional £2,200 to cover his household expenses. A council of twenty, based on those appointed two years before, was appointed to guide him and he was issued with patents affording him small powers such as approval of the election of clergymen. The king’s will was drawn up at Sandwich shortly before his departure that June, clarifying his son’s succession in the event of his failure to return. Had he been killed on campaign, it is impossible to know how events in England would have played out, or whether his wishes would have been honoured. In fact, his war turned out to be as brief as it was bloodless, and Edward IV returned to his kingdom, significantly richer, just three months later.
On 9 November 1477, shortly after Edward’s seventh birthday, Richard, Duke of Gloucester led the other lords of the Council to offer loyalty to the prince. Following a dinner hosted in Edward’s honour, Gloucester went ‘on both his knees’ and put ‘his hands between the prince’s hands’ to do ‘him homage for such lands as he had of him and so kissed him’. The boy replied by thanking ‘his said uncle that it liked him to do it so humbly’.10 Two years later the boy was created Earl of March and Earl of Pembroke, making him a powerful magnate in the Welsh Marches, an inheritance from the Yorkist Mortimer ancestors. As Edward passed through his early boyhood, it seemed that long-standing patterns of allegiance and loyalty were being established for him, in anticipation of his future rule.
His future was also being considered in terms of international marital alliances. The Prince of Wales would not be allowed to choose his own wife as his father had done and matches were considered with the eldest daughter of the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, the daughter of the Emperor and a princess of Milan. In 1480, negotiations were begun for an alliance between Edward and Anne, Duchess of Brittany, who was then 3 years old, followed by a treaty in 1481. The wedding was scheduled to take place when Anne reached her twelfth birthday, which gave a projected date of January 1489, when Prince Edward would be 18 years old.
In the meantime, the education of the future king continued. The few books known to have been among Edward’s collection included a French copy of the Testament of the Sultan, Woodville’s translation of Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers and The History of Jason, which was dedicated to him by the printer William Caxton. An Italian visitor to England in 1482–83, Dominic Mancini, whose source of information was Edward’s own doctor, John Argentine, described the boy’s feeling for literature, which enabled him to ‘discourse elegantly, to understand fully, and to declaim most excellently from any work whether verse or prose that came into his hands’. He was in possession of ‘talent and remarkable learning … far beyond his age’.11 Edward was still based at Ludlow, but he did join his family for Christmas – at Greenwich in 1479, Windsor in 1481 and Eltham in 1482 – as well as other occasions. Some of his visits were educational, such as the occasion in May 1481, when he visited Sandwich with his father to view the fleet which Lord Howard was to lead against Scotland. Two years later, Edward was scheduled to visit Canterbury with his mother but their plans were cancelled because of an outbreak of measles in the city.
At the start of 1483, Edward was a couple of months past his twelfth birthday and was clearly considered to be in transition from childhood to adolescence, growing up and requiring greater independence to prepare him for his majority. On 25 February, a new set of ordinances for his household were issued to update those which had been in place since he was 3. New appointments were made, although all the key staff remained in place, but now Edward was to be constantly accompanied by two ‘discrete and convenient’ people and he was not to issue any orders unless he took advice from Anthony Woodville, John Alcock or Sir Richard Grey, his half-brother from his mother’s first marriage. This trio were to watch over Edward’s behaviour and warn him if he broke any of the ordinances, to correct him and keep the king and queen informed of his progress. Might these stricter controls imply that Edward was asserting himself, or misbehaving? On the verge of young adulthood, he was clearly a youth who had a mind of his own and was conscious of his status.
It was just at this delicate point, as he was beginning to emerge as an individual, when he was most in need of guidance to steer him towards his future kingship, that the prince’s world collapsed. On 14 April, news arrived at Ludlow in mid-April that Edward IV had died at the age of 40. On the surface, it appeared that the prince’s power and influence had increased. Overnight he had become King of England and was at once to prepare for his departure for London and his coronation. In practice, it transpired that his reign was over before it even began.
It was never the intention of Edward V to attend his father’s funeral. That took place swiftly, while he was still in Ludlow, according to the protocol of the time. Immediately after his death, the former king was lain out in Westminster Abbey for the inspection of the mayor and aldermen, lords and bishops, less a macabre spectacle than confirmation that he was truly dead. Then, he was embalmed, wrapped in strips of waxed linen and dressed in regal finery, from his red leather shoes to his cap of estate. In this condition, his body remained in St Stephen’s chapel for eight days, watched over by members of his court while requiem masses were sung. On 17 April, Edward IV’s body was lifted onto a bier and covered in cloth of gold. Above him was carried a canopy of imperial cloth fringed with gold and blue silk, with banners at each corner depicting St George, St Edward, the Trinity and the Virgin Mary. Archbishop Rotherham, Edward’s chancellor, led the procession into the abbey, followed by the Duke of Norfolk who carried the king’s own banner before the bier, after which came a number of lords and knights. A life-size effigy of Edward wearing a crown and dressed in royal robes, holding orb and sceptre stood before the bier as offerings were made.
The next day, Edward’s body was taken from Westminster to Charing Cross and on to Sion Abbey for the night. Then it travelled to Eton, where the bishops of Lincoln and Ely censed him as he was brought into the chapel of St George, the architectural masterpiece of his reign. Nine knights and other loyal servants kept an overnight vigil at the king’s side and in the morning the final masses were read and Edward’s shield, sword and helmet were placed upon his tomb. The members of his household ceremoniously broke their white staves of office and cast the pieces into the grave. In 1475, Edward had outlined a design for a cadaver tomb, featuring the image of Death dressed in armour and a depiction of the king in life, made of ‘silver and gilt or at the least copper and gilt’. In 1482–83, casks of black marble were shipped from the Netherlands for the completion of the tomb but Edward’s premature death curtailed the completion of these plans. Instead, he lay under a simple slab, where his wife Elizabeth would later join him. He had been buried for almost a week before his son set out for the capital.
Edward left Ludlow on 24 April, accompanied by the trio appointed by his father to guide him: Anthony Woodville, Thomas Vaughan and Richard Grey. But the young king and his party would have needed to travel quickly, as a coronation date had been set for 4 May, allowing only two weeks for him to travel the 150 miles, conduct necessary business and be received in London. Parliament may have anticipated that he would leave Wales sooner, but ten days elapsed between the news’ arrival at Ludlow and the boy’s departure. This delay allowed Edward’s uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to leave his home in Yorkshire before them and ride south to meet them at Stony Stratford on 29 April, just 50 miles north of the capital. It was clearly arranged in advance, probably at Richard’s instigation, as Edward’s party could have taken a more direct route, south-west through Gloucester and Oxford, instead of the path through Banbury and Grafton Regis to Stony Stratford. Leaving the king behind at the Rose and Crown Inn, Woodville rode 12 miles to meet Richard in Northampton. According to the Croyland Chronicle, Edward urged his uncle to go and pay his respects and ‘submit the conduct of everything to this will and discretion of … the Duke of Gloucester’.12 The pair dined with Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, Edward’s uncle by marriage, and appeared to part on good terms. However, early the following morning, Richard arrived in Stony Stratford, confiscated the keys to the inn and arrested Woodville, Grey and Vaughan.
But the young king was not prepared to accept the arrest of men who had cared for him for as long as he could remember. According to his latest household ordinances, at 12½, Edward had already shown himself to be capable of independent thought. He challenged Richard’s actions, only to be told that the three had been plotting to take control by force and had concealed a number of weapons in their luggage from Ludlow. Croyland relates how Richard and Buckingham bowed before the boy, bare-headed, with ‘every mark of respect’ and explained that their ‘only care was for the protection of his person, as [they] knew for certain that there were men in attendance upon the King who had conspired against both his honour and his very existence’.13 Mancini’s account goes further, stating that Richard blamed the death of Edward IV upon the dead man’s friends, claiming that they had ‘little regard for his honour, since they were accounted his companions and servants of his vices, and had ruined his health’. It was essential, Richard added, that the boy should not fall into their hands and that, due to his youth, he would be ‘incapable of governing so great a realm by means of puny men’. He justified the arrests by saying that Woodville and the others were planning to ambush him on the road and cause his death, but their accomplices had revealed the plan to him just in time. It was ‘common knowledge’ that they were attempting to ‘deprive him of the office of regent conferred on him by his brother’ and their ‘previous licence’ proved them capable of anything.14
Young as he was, Edward was intelligent enough not to be convinced by arguments that seemed to contradict his own experience. In response, he reminded Richard that he was attended by men appointed by his father and that, ‘relying on his father’s prudence, he believed that good and faithful ones had been given him’ and he wished to retain them ‘until otherwise proved to be evil’.15 He had every confidence in his servants and had put his trust in the lords and the queen, who awaited him in London. Buckingham disabused the boy of this belief, telling him that women had no business ruling kingdoms and that ‘if he cherished any confidence in her he had better relinquish it’. According to Mancini, the real intention of Richard and Buckingham was apparent despite their initial show of deference, ‘for although they cajoled him by moderation, yet they clearly showed that they were demanding rather than supplicating’.16 Edward had little choice but to agree to submit himself to the care of his uncles, conscious of their greater power at this point. He must have wondered what was happening but probably hoped that all would be resolved once they arrived in the capital.
The news of Richard’s actions reached London that night. Awaiting the arrival of her son, the Queen Dowager Elizabeth realised the danger she was in and fled to seek sanctuary again at Westminster with her children. It took another five days for the boy to reach the city, making a ceremonial entrance on the very day intended for his coronation, 4 May, accompanied by Richard and Buckingham. Initially all seemed well, with Edward appearing in blue velvet to be welcomed at Hornsey Park by the mayor and aldermen in scarlet and 500 citizens in violet, who joined to swear an oath of allegiance to him. He was lodged in the Bishop’s Palace at St Paul’s and received visitors, although this venue was quickly judged to be too small for the scale of entertaining required. He was thus moved to the Tower, some time between 9 and 16 May. With the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult not to read this as sinister, as the ‘Prince in the Tower’ being manoeuvred into place for the final act of the drama, but it may not have been so. Several sites were suggested as lodgings for the boy, including Westminster Palace and the Hospital of St John, before Buckingham proposed the Tower. This plan was ‘at last agreed to by all, even those who had been originally opposed thereunto’, which implies pressure on the duke’s part, even though the palace was more suitable, right beside the abbey, where the coronation was scheduled to take place. It should be remembered, however, that the Tower was the location the queen had originally selected to deliver Edward, back in 1470, and it was only to acquire its sinister reputation after the boy and his brother disappeared behind its forbidding walls. A new coronation date was set for 22 June. Edward’s first Parliament was to meet three days later. Instructions were given for new coins to be minted in his name. His name appeared on official grants until the middle of June. It appeared that the transition between kings would now take place smoothly. But Edward was never seen again.
By the second week of June it became clear that things were changing. Awaiting his coronation in the Tower, Edward was placed at a significant distance from his council, who were meeting to discuss arrangements for the event, his father’s will and the question of who would guide the boy once he was crowned. A letter written by a Simon Stallworthe, in the service of the Bishop of Lincoln, to John Stoner, stated that negotiations between the Council and the queen had broken down and the members were refusing to visit her in her sanctuary. He continued that ‘there is great business against the coronation’ and a surviving fragment from the book of a London merchant indicated that ‘divers imagined the death of the Duke of Gloucester’.17 A mood of unease set in when Richard summoned troops from the north and Edward IV’s old friend Lord Hastings was dragged out of a meeting and executed on the spot, at Richard’s request. Three days later, on 16 June, Edward’s younger brother, the 9-year-old Richard, Duke of York, was removed from sanctuary with his mother by Archbishop Bourchier. Gloucester had argued in a council meeting that the boy should be with his brother for the coronation, so a ring of armed men surrounded the abbey and the prince was sent to the Tower despite Elizabeth’s protests.
In the meantime, arrangements were proceeding for Edward’s coronation and the opening of his first Parliament. John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln and newly appointed Lord Chancellor, prepared a speech for the first sessions, to honour the estate of the nobles, the commons and ‘owre glorious prince and King, Edward V’. Russell intended to say on Edward’s behalf that ‘Godd hath called me in my tendire age to be yowre kynge and soverayne’ and to remind those assembled of the ‘fluctuation and changing among the nobles’ which had lately occurred in the realm. He appealed to the people represented by those assembled lords to obey them in the name of the law they shared, as members of the same metaphorical body of England. God had called Edward, as ‘a yonge creature coming out of the wombe’, to heal that body as a whole and recognise its rotten members. He recognised that Edward would require guidance through the early years of his reign, ‘which yn the tyme of the kynges tender age must nedely be borne and supported by the ryght noble and famous prince the Duke of gloucestir hys uncle, protector of this’ realm. Russell continued to praise Gloucester as wise in the defence of the realm and opposed to ‘the open ennemies as ageynste the subtylle and faynte fryndes of the same’, and anticipated he would have the tutelage and oversight of ‘the kynges most roialle persone durynge hys … yeres of tendirnesse’. Although his father had passed away, Edward was perfectly placed between the former king and his uncle, with Gloucester ‘ordeigned as next in perfyt age of the blod Ryall, to be hys tutor and protector’. The duke’s power and authority were established, Russell observed, as was his martial experience, so that ‘the kynge oure soverayne lord may have cause largely to rejoyse hym selfe and congruently say’18 to his uncle how glad he was to be in his protection. Russell had already been instrumental in the education of one young man anticipating future kingship, Edward of Lancaster, and would no doubt have proved a valuable guide during the youth of Edward V. But this fulsome praise of Richard was never delivered.
On 16 or 17 June, the meeting of Edward’s first Parliament was cancelled. Edward may not have been informed of this latest development. Increasingly, he and his brother were out of touch with developments in the Council. Mancini relates that the two boys were observed playing and shooting in the Tower gardens or at the windows on a couple of occasions over the coming weeks. His source was his fellow Italian, Dr John Argentine, who was still employed as Edward’s doctor and visited him regularly in his apartments. In the week of 17–22 June, though, the boys were moved to the innermost apartments of the Tower and were seen less and less; his last signature as king was made on 17 June. All their household servants were dismissed. Eighteen of them were paid off early in July. On Sunday 22 June, the day that should have been Edward’s coronation, the first decisive move was made to depose the uncrowned king. Dr Ralph Shaa preached a sermon entitled ‘bastard slips shall not take deep root’ at St Paul’s Cross, claiming that Edward IV had been precontracted to marry Eleanor Butler, meaning that his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was invalid and their offspring illegitimate. The same message went out from a number of pulpits across the capital in a concerted attempt to prove that Edward was not entitled to rule, and that the crown should pass instead to his uncle Richard. The young king’s reign formally ended on 25 June, after which he was referred to as ‘Edward, bastard, late called King Edward V’. At the same time, his former guardians, Anthony Woodville, Richard Grey and Thomas Rivers, were executed at Pontefract.
Within the Tower’s walls, it is impossible to know what the young Edward’s experience of all this was, or to what degree he was informed of the changes taking place outside. He must have been aware that the day of his coronation had passed and is likely to have asked questions. He had the intelligence to understand that his deposition and the accession of his uncle put his life in danger. A report by Dr Argentine gives a glimpse of the boy’s state of mind and his last miserable days: ‘like a victim prepared for his sacrifice [Edward] made daily confession because he thought that death was facing him.’19 On 4 July, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, now proclaimed Richard III, and his wife Anne, arrived at the Tower in advance of their coronation, which was scheduled for two days’ time. A 10 p.m. curfew was imposed in the city and Richard’s northern soldiers were positioned in the streets. After this point, there was no recorded sighting of Edward or his brother. Not a single source has them alive from this day forward. If, as one argument goes, Richard was seeking an opportunity to kill the two boys, the night of 4 July certainly afforded one. Nine days later, when Mancini left England, he was able to state that the princes had ‘ceased to appear altogether’ and that he had ‘seen many men burst forth in tears and lamentations when mention was made of [Edward V] after his removal from men’s sight, and already there was a suspicion that he had been done away with’.20 The next question arising is exactly when this took place. The contemporary evidence suggests that Edward was killed between July and November that year.
Writing in the next reign, Thomas More drew on information from Bishop Morton, who had been arrested at the same time as Hastings, to state that Richard had ordered the deaths of his nephews on 29 July. This was the day Richard left the capital to head north on royal progress. Morton might have heard this from Buckingham, who was with Richard on this occasion and remained in his company until 2 August. After overhearing this command, the duke rode home to Brecon, where Morton was currently his prisoner. More believed that Buckingham was upset by the revelation that Richard intended to put the boys to death, which is why he rebelled against him a few weeks later. It was indeed a strange moment to quit the new king’s side, as Buckingham had been with Richard throughout the summer, urging him forward, facilitating his succession, officiating at his coronation. He could, rightly, have taken his place in the splendid ceremonies planned in York, but he chose to retreat into the countryside. More’s account states that the new king dispatched his servant Sir James Tyrrell to London to commit the murders, and a reputed confession by Tyrrell in exile, in 1502, would seem to support this. However, the confession was recorded while he was under arrest for treason and the relevant document appears never to have been produced. But this does not mean it never existed. Buckingham was executed for rebellion that November, at the same time as the rebels rose in the belief that Edward V had been murdered. While a couple of contemporary sources cite Buckingham as the instrument used by Richard to bring about the boys’ demise, this may well have been propaganda circulated following his treason.
Historian Alison Weir speculates that the deed was done on 3 September, when Richard sent Tyrrell to collect hangings and robes from the Tower and bring them to York, for the investiture of Richard’s son as Prince of Wales. It was two weeks later, in the middle of September, that the Recorder of Bristol, Robert Ricart, wrote that the boys had been ‘put to silence’ in the Tower. Then there is the allegiance of the rebels who raised their standard in November to support Henry Tudor, who planned to marry the boys’ eldest sister. Initially it was hoped that Henry would restore Edward but support for Tudor as a candidate for the throne grew rapidly as the rumours arrived from London. The Croyland Chronicle, which historians believe to have been written by a member of Richard’s council, confirms that the princes died late that summer. Initially the writer asserts that at the end of July, the princes were ‘under special guard’ and that an attempt was being planned to release them by people in the south-west, who ‘began to murmur greatly and to form assemblies and confederacies, many of which worked in secret’. Soon afterwards, though, he was reporting that ‘a rumour arose that King Edward’s sons, by some unknown manner of violent destruction, had met their fates.’21 Tudor himself was convinced of Richard’s guilt, referring to him as a ‘homicide’ guilty of ‘the shedding of infant’s blood’. By the following January, their deaths were being assumed on the continent, the French Chancellor, Guillaume de Rochefort, describing how the boys, ‘already big and courageous, have been put to death with impunity and the royal crown transferred to their murderer’. The French chronicler Jean Molinet stated that they had been held prisoner for around seven weeks before being smothered. In March 1486, the Spanish historian Diego de Valera claimed that Richard had ‘poisoned his nephews’, while Alvaro Lopes de Chaves, the secretary to the King of Portugal, asserted in 1488 that they were starved to death.
Other sources express uncertainty about the fates and locations of the two boys but, with one exception, these are datable to after the event. Visiting England in 1484, Nicolas von Popplau wrote glowingly of Richard, adding that ‘many people’ believed that the princes were ‘still alive’ and ‘kept in a very dark cellar’, although he could offer no evidence to this effect, merely a report of rumour. Thomas More also records such rumours but, given the mysterious nature of their demise, caution and doubt are more the sign of a reflective chronicler than a real indication that they may have survived. The suggestion that the boys were allowed to leave the Tower and live out their days in the countryside with their mother betrays a naivety regarding the realpolitik of the fifteenth century and has no basis in fact. Such theories are the result of circular rumours, coming into being through the efforts of the pretenders Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, which fired the imaginations of those reluctant to believe the worst.
Writing in the 1580s, antiquarian John Stowe related that there had been a plot to liberate the princes in July 1483, which involved lighting a fire within the Tower’s walls to distract the attention of their gaolers. It may have been the same plan, or a different one, which intended to send the boys’ sisters to safety overseas, prompting Richard to set a guard around their sanctuary. This conformed to the usual standpoint, in the century following Bosworth, for historians to assume the boys’ death and the guilt of Richard III. John Rous described how the ‘usurper King Richard III then ascended the throne of the slaughtered children’, and contemporary poems, such as the Ballad of Lady Bessie, The Rose of England and Ode on the Battle of Bosworth, depicted the evil murdering Richard that found full development in the work of writers such as Polydore Vergil, More, Hall, Holinshed and Shakespeare.
The deaths of the boys are not depicted directly on stage in Shakespeare’s Richard III. Instead the audience learns that the deed has taken place through the soliloquy of James Tyrell, who paints a romantic picture that tugged the heartstrings of even the two murderers, whom Shakespeare names as Miles Forrest and John Dighton, identified as early as More’s history eighty years before:
The tyrannous and bloody deed is done.
The most arch of piteous massacre
That ever yet this land was guilty of.
Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn
To do this ruthless piece of butchery,
Although they were flesh’d villains, bloody dogs,
Melting with tenderness and kind compassion
Wept like two children in their deaths’ sad stories.
‘Lo, thus’ quoth Dighton, ‘lay those tender babes:’
‘Thus, thus,’ quoth Forrest, ‘girdling one another
Within their innocent alabaster arms:
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
Which in their summer beauty kiss’d each other.
A book of prayers on their pillow lay;
Which once,’ quoth Forrest, ‘almost changed my mind;
But O! the devil’--there the villain stopp’d
Whilst Dighton thus told on: ‘We smothered
The most replenished sweet work of nature,
That from the prime creation e’er she framed.’
Thus both are gone with conscience and remorse;
They could not speak; and so I left them both,
To bring this tidings to the bloody King.
Upon hearing this news, Shakespeare’s Richard comments that ‘the sons of Edward sleep in Abraham’s bosom’, which alludes to the contemporary view that a small number of exceptionally good individuals bypass purgatory altogether and proceed straight to heaven. The connotations of ‘bosom’, taken from the story of Lazarus in the New Testament, are that of comfort and contentment, suggesting a place reserved for a special guest. Not only was this intended to offer a contrast with Richard himself, but something of a comfort to the audience, to salvage something of a retrospective ‘happy ending’ for the boys.
The most likely end to the mystery of Edward V’s deposition is that he died in the Tower in the summer of 1483. One certainly arrives at this conclusion based upon incomplete information, but motive and opportunity can be established, in terms of the dangers of keeping the boy alive, the days on which the murders could have occurred and who could have committed them. With Edward already emerging as independent around the time of his twelfth birthday, he could have represented a formidable future opponent to Richard. At the time of the last known sighting of the boys, in early July 1483, Edward was four months off his thirteenth birthday. One more year and he would have been considered of age, able to rule as king in his own right. Even when he was deposed he was rapidly growing into a man and would have continued to provide a figurehead for rebels, and a thorn in Richard’s side, while he remained alive. Although Richard’s first Parliament passed the act Titulus Regius, establishing the boys’ illegitimacy, this would have proved no barrier for Edward’s supporters, had they been able to restore him to power. Such acts were easily overturned, as Henry VII was to prove in 1485. Act or no act, Edward V was too dangerous to be allowed to live and no reports suggest that he survived his incarceration in the Tower. Had he and his brother survived, and been successfully smuggled out of London, or even out of England, their claims to the throne make it unlikely that they would have been content to live out their days in obscurity. Yet nothing was ever heard of Edward V again.
It is the sad fate of Edward V that the circumstances of 1483 have generated more interest in his death than in his life. This is partly explained by the young age at which he met his end, but also the immense constitutional significance of his removal from a throne to which he had already succeeded. This act, apparently followed swiftly by his death, represents either a deposition or a usurpation, depending upon one’s interpretation, but cannot deny the boy’s sovereignty. Whatever the truth of Richard III’s claims about Edward’s legitimacy, the fact remains that they were not made public until 22 June, a full ten weeks after the death of Edward IV. This means that Edward V had already reigned for two and a half months, so the decision made by Richard to replace him was a decision to remove a reigning king, rather than a Prince of Wales or a hopeful rival. Edward had not yet been crowned and anointed, but he was still legally recognised as ruler, and had been from the day after his father’s demise. In this respect, the events of that summer take on a magnitude beyond the facts of the boy’s existence and his loss. For the historian, it is not simply a question of what type of kingship he and his potential offspring might have adopted, it is a matter of the reversal of a process believed to be a question of divine law.
And yet, Edward’s case is even more complex. Late medieval kings had been removed before, but when Henry Bolingbroke replaced Richard II and Edward IV deposed Henry VI, each was acting against a different branch of the family, a distant cousin, a fully grown adult, an individual who was perceived to have failed in his duty. Neither of them, nor their predecessor Edward II, survived the process, all dying violently in mysterious circumstances soon afterwards. These cases established precedents for the killing of a deposed ruler but none of them encompassed the death of a minor. The removal of Edward V was unprecedented and shocking, even to his contemporaries, for three reasons: because the instigator was his uncle and Protector, the king was a child who had shown potential and he was removed before he had had the chance to prove himself. It is easy and natural to be sentimental about two children who likely met a violent end but the facts in the case of Edward V are such that sentimentalisation is hardly required to reveal the horror and significance of the case. And this is even before the question of culpability arises.
The immediate consequence of the death of Edward V was the reign of Richard III. This set in motion a chain of events that led to the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485 and the advent of the Tudor dynasty. It was in the name of Edward V, or perhaps in his memory, that Henry Tudor launched a first invasion of England in the winter of 1483, just months after the boys’ disappearance. The initial plan was to remove Richard and restore Edward, Tudor’s reward being marriage to the young king’s elder sister, Elizabeth of York. But during Richard’s reign something changed. It was the certainty of Edward’s death that underpinned Tudor’s second invasion and his proclamation as king. He claimed the throne by right of conquest, but would not have done so had Edward V remained a prisoner in the Tower or in exile, given his stronger claim. In a section of the Croyland Chronicle composed in April 1486, the author includes a short poem which states that the third Richard had ‘destroy[ed] his brother’s progeny’ but their cause was ‘avenged’ at Bosworth. When the first Tudor Parliament reversed Titulus Regius, ordering the destruction of all existing copies, Henry legitimised all Edward IV’s children, re-establishing Edward V’s superior claim to the throne. That document’s inclusion of the accusation that Richard had been guilty of shedding infants’ blood is a further indication of the Tudor-York royal family’s belief in Edward’s murder.
Further evidence for Edward’s death can be found in the actions of his cousin, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. The eldest son of Edward IV’s sister, de la Pole rose against the Tudor regime in 1487, offering a 10-year-old boy, Lambert Simnel, in the role of Richard, Duke of York. Had the rebels believed that the younger prince was still genuinely alive at that point, by which he would have been 15, they would have rallied behind the real duke, rather than an imposter. Later, Simnel dropped the claim to be Richard of York, instead adopting the identity of Richard’s cousin Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence. This acknowledged the death of the little duke, but was far easier for Tudor to refute, as the real Earl of Warwick was then incarcerated in the Tower. Thus, Henry was able to expose the fraud and eradicate de la Pole’s cause at the Battle of Stoke. A few years later, another claimant also attempted to adopt the identity of Richard, Duke of York, but Perkin Warbeck later confessed to have been a native Fleming and was never identified by Queen Elizabeth as her long-lost brother. No pretender ever assumed the identity of Edward V. Even Warbeck’s cover story, that his brother’s murderer took pity on him and helped him escape, allowed that the former king must be dead. Although sympathy, even a romantic hope, might linger into the twenty-first century, the overwhelming silence regarding the survival of Edward V after July 1483 must be considered conclusive.
The trail may have gone cold there, but for a controversial discovery. In 1647 workmen excavating a stairwell in the White Tower found a box of bones, including scraps of velvet, an upper-class material, which convinced the current king, Charles II, that they belonged to the princes. The remains were reinterred in Westminster Abbey as such in a white marble urn designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and there they remained for almost 300 years. In 1933, the urn was opened and the contents examined by Lawrence Tanner, archivist of Westminster Abbey, and William Wright, President of Great Britain’s Anatomical Society.
The skeletons were incomplete, mixed with other matter and animal bones, but portions of two skulls were present, allowing the use of dental evidence. This suggested that the elder child was aged 12 or 13 and the younger 9 to 11, which was consistent with the ages of the princes at the time of their disappearance. As neither boy had yet undergone puberty, there was no way of establishing the gender of the bones, but estimates of their height put one at around 4ft 9in or 4ft 10in and the other just under 4ft 7in. Examination of the two jaw bones later revealed dental similarities with the skull of Anne Mowbray, child-bride of Richard, Duke of York, who was also related to the princes by blood. Mowbray’s skull was discovered and examined in 1965, whereupon it was noticed that she suffered from hypodontia, or the failure of some teeth to develop, exactly as had been noticed in the jaws bones discovered in the Tower. It was also suggested in 1934 that the skull reputed to belong to Edward V bore a red bloodstain but this has since been discredited and there was no other visible sign of the cause of death on the bones, leaving poisoning, smothering, drowning and neglect as the most likely.
One other interesting discovery arose from the examination of the bones. Tanner and Wright concluded that the elder skull bore signs of disease, suggesting that Edward V suffered from osteomyletis, an inflammation of the bone caused by a bacterial infection. This could be very painful, stemming from an infected tooth socket and, before the age of antibiotics, it could prove fatal. No records survive of Edward experiencing anything of this kind during his lifetime, although it is conceivable that the royal family might have wished to keep it quiet, as a sign of weakness. It may be that the illness was recent, post-dating the boy’s accession, as the condition is judged chronic if the infection has lasted more than one month. Symptoms include facial pain and swelling, chronic fatigue, fever, difficulty opening the mouth and swallowing, but may not have been so severe in Edward V, for lack of time. Conditions in the Tower, or the neglect of his health during this time, may have contributed to it. The possibility cannot be decisively ruled out that Edward actually died of this infection while in the Tower, facilitating Richard’s eradication of the line. Even in the event of the king’s death by illness, Richard is unlikely to have made a public announcement, as the crown would have automatically passed to the 9-year-old Duke of York. It is not impossible that the uncle killed the younger brother but not the elder.
Even if the urn in Westminster Abbey were to be reopened today and examined using modern forensic techniques, many questions would remain unanswered. If the identity of the bones could be established using DNA, the fate of Edward V and his brother could potentially be settled, yet the identity of their killer would not be settled. It would remain assumption, albeit the most logical, that they died in 1483, and it would still be assumption. though he is the likeliest candidate, that Richard had ordered it. However, even if Richard himself had not carried out the act, or appointed someone to do it for him, the responsibility still lies with him as the boys’ uncle and their monarch. There is no doubt whatsoever that he removed Edward V from the throne and both boys’ welfare was his responsibility: the fact cannot be ignored that their disappearance happened on his watch.
Edward V and his brother Richard feature in several iconic paintings from the late Georgian and Victorian period, all of which take the expected approach of sentimentalising the boys’ last moments. In 1786, James Northcote portrayed the two princes asleep in bed, the moment before they were smothered. Pink and white, with flowing curls, they appear the very image of innocence as they sleep in each other’s arms, with an abandoned book to one side and a crucifix above them. Their murderers loom over them, swarthy and crude, one in armour with his helmet pulled low over his eyes, the other with sleeves rolled up, exposing the boys with a lamp, seeming like a servant. In 1831, French artist Paul Delaroche created a more historically accurate image of the boys which allows for the uncertainty of their demise. Rejecting more sentimental potential titles, he called his version The Children of Edward IV, although the image depicts only two of them. Delaroche places the boys on the end of an ornately carved bed, with Edward seated and Richard either leaning against him or seated on a stool which is concealed by his long gown. They have been reading, but appear to have heard a noise and while Edward looks straight out from the canvas, the attention of his brother and their small dog is drawn by the imminent arrival of an unknown person, presumably their killer. Possibly the most famous of all the later images of the princes was created by John Everett Millais in 1878. Millais places two delicate, scared children at the foot of a flight of steps, in a reference to the location where the bones were discovered two centuries before. The boys appear holding hands, dressed all in black against a dark surround, their bright faces and golden hair standing out as angelic. Their wide eyes appear alarmed as they stare out of the canvas, unaware that the glimmer of light at the top of the stairs behind them heralds the arrival of their murderer. It is a simple, powerful image by a pre-Raphaelite artist famous for sympathetic depictions of the innocent who went on to produce the sentimental image Bubbles, used for advertising by Pears’ Soap. Millais’ The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower is the most frequently reproduced image of the boys, instantly recognised even by those who know little more than their identities. It immediately evokes sympathy and demonstrates the reverse side of the Ricardian coin, of which their historical reputations will always be a function.
The most significant effect of Edward V’s death was the damning of Richard III. Of course, if the decision to depose and kill the boy was entirely Richard’s, he was indeed the author of his own damnation, as judged by many of his contemporaries and the majority of later historians. But the death of Edward and his brother was to prove inescapable for Richard, leading directly to challenges that created a sense of unease throughout his brief reign and which culminated with his death in battle. Despite the best efforts of Ricardians to exonerate him from the crime, they remain in the minority, against the evidence of the remaining facts. Other enthusiasts explain his actions within the context of late medieval realpolitik, without denying the significance of Edward V’s deposition and death, or the impact upon Richard’s reign. In personal terms, Edward was an unexpected, possibly avoidable, casualty. He was not cut down on the battlefield, executed for treason or removed for incompetence. He was an untried king who was destroyed for reasons beyond his control. Whether the victim of his father’s youthful licentiousness or his uncle’s ambition, more than any other individual of the era, he was a victim of his times, of the intrigues of the adult world.
The deaths of Edmund, Earl of Rutland, Edward, Prince of Wales and Edward V belong to the first phase of the conflicts that have come to be known as the Wars of the Roses, or the Cousins’ War. Each died as a result of dynastic conflict but at different levels of engagement. Edmund was fighting in defence of the rights given to his family by the 1460 Act of Accord. With his father nominated by Parliament as Henry VI’s heir, a right which then devolved upon his sons in order of birth, Edmund was protecting his dynasty and his own claim to the throne, righting a wrong he believed went back to the displacement of the Yorkist line by the Lancastrians back in 1399. He had not expected to be attacked at Wakefield. This attack constituted an act of treason, by the terms of the new act. When the battle came to him, he fought valiantly but lost his life in the aftermath. The Act of Accord also underpinned the actions of Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales. Its change to dynastic focus left him disinherited for no reason other than York’s ambition. Edward had been born in legal matrimony, the son of a reigning king raised in anticipation of rule. When he returned to England in the spring of 1471, he did so in the belief that his father had been usurped and his bloodline displaced. At 17, he made the active decision to engage the enemy in battle, although he could not have anticipated the loss of the Earl of Warwick, who had been a vital component of the campaign. The case of Edward V differs vastly from these two in its details. At only 12, he would not have been expected to fight on the battlefield, although he might soon have brought his persuasion to bear in the Council chamber. Assuming that his death took place in the Tower in 1483, Edward was killed as a result of dynastic conflict, but to say that he was a victim of war is too simplistic and denies the personal involvement of those in whose care he had been placed. He was the victim of whoever ordered and carried out his death, and the dynastic struggle at this point had turned inwards. With the leading Lancastrians dead or in exile, York was fighting York. Edward was murdered because he was the eldest son of Edward IV and an obstacle to Richard.
These three deaths encompass an important phase in late medieval history. They delineate the span of the first Yorkist reign, Edward IV’s rule, the means by which it came about and the results of its premature end, when the king passed away unexpectedly at the age of 40. During this period, illness, plague and accident also threatened the lives of young men, but the most frequent cause of adolescent deaths among the aristocracy was their engagement in battle. This was by no means consistent though, since certain families took a cautious path and avoided committing to conflict, but for those who did, such repeated warfare had devastating effects. It would be going too far to say that the late medieval aristocracy was decimated by the Wars of the Roses, but several branches certainly took a body blow.
One such family was the Staffords. Richard of York’s wife Cecily, mother to Edward IV, Edmund, Duke of Rutland and Richard III, was one of twenty-four siblings and half-siblings born to her parents in the decades either side of the turn of the fifteenth century. Her closest sister, Anne, was married to the loyal Lancastrian Humphrey Stafford, First Duke of Buckingham, back in the days before the question of York and Lancaster had reached a crisis. In the 1420s, ’30s and ’40s, Anne bore Humphrey ten children – four girls and six boys. The eldest son and heir to the family title died before his father (who was killed in battle in 1460), perhaps of the plague, or of the wounds he had received while fighting for the Lancastrians at the first Battle of St Albans in 1455. He was dead by 1458, but had reached his thirties at this point, old enough to have married and fathered a son, named Henry. This son, the Second Duke of Buckingham, would become the closest companion of Richard III, helping him to the throne and then rebelling against him in the autumn of 1483. Henry had fathered four children, including two sons, and it was to his eldest, Edward, that his title passed. Edward became the Third Duke of Buckingham but was executed by Henry VIII in 1521, for pretensions to the throne. Thus, through this direct line, four generations of the Stafford male heirs died in violent circumstances: Humphrey and his eldest son in battle, Henry and Edward on the executioner’s block. Going further back, more violent and premature deaths are revealed. Humphrey’s father had died in battle at Shrewsbury in 1403, yet he had been the youngest of four brothers, the rest of whom had predeceased him violently. It is necessary to go back to Humphrey’s grandfather, Hugh de Stafford, to find a male in the family who died peacefully, on pilgrimage in 1386, at the Hospital of the Knights of St John, on Rhodes.
Humphrey and Anne Stafford produced another five sons. The second, Henry, was in his forties when he died as a result of wounds he sustained at the Battle of Tewkesbury. He had been married for over a decade to Margaret Beaufort, mother of the future Henry VII, but the couple had no children. Lingering for about six months after the battle, Henry had time to put his affairs in order and prepare himself to make a ‘good’ death by accepting and embracing his fate. He drew up his will on 2 October 1471, requesting that his body be buried at the Collegiate Church at Pleshey, in Essex, with which he was associated through the line of his paternal grandmother, Anne of Gloucester, granddaughter of Edward III, and from the Essex de Bohun line. The church had been founded in 1394 by Anne’s first husband, Thomas, while the couple lived at nearby Pleshey Castle and Henry’s father Humphrey had already been laid to rest there, after requesting that money be paid to the local poor to pray for his soul.22 Henry left the sizeable sum of £160 ‘for the finding of an honest and fitting priest to sing for my soul in the said college for evermore’; a horse cloth and four new velvet harnesses for his stepson Henry Tudor; a good horse, a ‘bay courser’, for his only surviving brother, John Stafford; a ‘grizzled horse’ for his friend Reginald Bray; and the rest of his goods for his wife, Margaret.23 Henry died two days later, on 4 October 1471. He was buried at Holy Trinity Church, Pleshey.
How long was Henry Stafford’s ‘for evermore’? Some wills specify terms of prayer of one, five or seven years, perhaps in the hope that their soul would have left purgatory by this point. Henry Stafford can hardly have imagined that his request would be honoured ad infinitum? When it came to the observance of prayers for the dead, the following century would witness the almost complete rejection of this practice. Henry could not have foreseen this religious sea change, but did he really hope that £160 would cover it? It is plausible that he was hoping, after the duration of this time, that his surviving relatives, his brother, wife and friends, would have made similar bequests in their wills, or continue to pray for him, extending his period of grace piecemeal until he had passed out of living memory? Wills certainly did make reference to already deceased family members, often spanning many decades. When Jasper Tudor recorded his last wishes in 1495, he requested prayers for his mother, Catherine of Valois, who had died almost sixty years earlier; for his father Owen Tudor, then dead for thirty-four years; and for his brother Edmund, dead for almost four decades, as well as ‘the souls of my other predecessors’.24 It seems that in many cases, after an individual passed from living memory, unless they were a notable figure, or the founder or benefactor of a dynastic line, they were absorbed into the catch-all prayers for ‘predecessors’ or ‘ancestors’. It gives us pause for thought regarding the late medieval belief in the duration of purgatory and also the meaning of ‘evermore’, in the same way that the contemporary marriage vows of ‘until death do us part’ might only mean a couple of years, with swift remarriage on the horizon.
Henry had four other brothers, born to Humphrey and Anne Stafford. Edward appears to have died young, as did the twins George and William who arrived in 1439. That left John, who was born in November 1427 and outlived Henry to receive the good horse in his will. John survived the conflicts of the 1460s and ’70s, although he fought for the Yorkists at Hexham in 1464 and was imprisoned by the Earl of Warwick in 1470, which may have prevented him from fighting at Tewkesbury. He died of unknown causes on 8 May 1473, in his mid-forties, leaving behind a single son, Edward, who was then just 3 years old. Edward succeeded to his father’s title of the earldom of Wiltshire, but his junior status in the family meant that the dukedom of Buckingham passed through his uncle’s line, out of his reach. He became a ward of the king, carrying the queen’s crown at the coronation of Richard III and Anne Neville in 1483, and was present when their son Edward was created Prince of Wales, around six weeks later. He survived the change of regime to the Tudors and was present at the coronation of Elizabeth of York, helped defend Henry VII against a rebel army and entertained the king at his Northamptonshire home. He must have suffered from some unspecified illness, as he drew up his will on 21 March 1499, at the age of 28.
In death, Edward, Earl of Wiltshire remembered his ancestors, but it was the maternal side of the family that he chose to honour, requesting to be buried in St Peter’s church, Lowick, Northamptonshire, ‘in Oure Lady’s aisle by my grandfather Greene’.25 This is significant, as his loyalties clearly lay not with the main Stafford branch, that of the lost dukedom, but with his mother’s father, Henry Greene, who lay in a chest tomb in the south transept, his effigy dressed in full armour above a shield of the family arms. With no surviving male heir, Henry had passed his inheritance to his daughter’s husband and on to his grandson, so Edward received the impressive Drayton House, which had been in the Greene family for six generations. Edward was clearly grateful, and mindful of the need to actively give thanks, as he refounded the chantry chapel and left money for the chapel to be remodelled. Lacking children in 1499, Edward left gifts to his wife, cousin, uncle and aunt, requesting that his executors make him ‘a convenient tomb’. He died three days later, of unknown causes. His ‘convenient’ tomb has survived, though, on the south side of the south chapel. It is not quite typical of its time, perhaps even harking back to earlier medieval practices in contrast with the funerary advances made in the construction of Westminster’s Lady Chapel and the work of the Italian Renaissance artist Pietro Torrigiano on the tomb of Henry VII. The Renaissance had not reached Lowick, and Edward lies under a chest tomb of white alabaster, decorated with arms inside lozenge panels, inside cusped squared panels. Above this, the young man reclines in alabaster, in partial armour, his clasped hands gloved but his head bare. His Stafford ancestry is represented in the iconography of knots that referenced the dynastic emblem – the Stafford knot that featured eleven times upon their family flag.
The Stafford family are a strong example of how the premature death of young aristocratic men impacted upon a dynastic line. Confining the data to two subsequent generations, the marriage of Humphrey and Anne resulted in seventeen live births, of which eleven were male. Out of these, only three men went on to produce sons of their own. Of the four daughters born to Anne Stafford, three had no known offspring, or daughters, and only one, Catherine, had two sons. The only little flourish of fecundity is to be found in the next generation, when Catherine’s eldest boy, George, fathered eleven children of his own, although they bore their mother’s surname by marriage, which was Talbot. The continuation of the Stafford name had depended upon a single birth line, that of the eldest sons: Humphrey, Henry and Edward. And although their genes appeared to dwindle for a while, curtailed by battle, early death and execution, Edward’s son would father fourteen children, his seven sons ensuring the continuity of the Stafford name through the sixteenth century.
Similar losses were experienced by other leading medieval families as a result of dynastic and political conflict. Of the ten children born to Edmund Beaufort, Second Duke of Somerset and Eleanor Beauchamp, four were boys. After the death of their father at the Battle of St Albans in 1455, the eldest, Henry, was killed at Hexham in 1464, aged 28, leaving a single, illegitimate son. His youngest brother, Thomas, died at the age of 8, while the middle two, Edmund and John, both perished at Tewkesbury, aged 32 and 16 respectively. Neither left issue. The only Beaufort grandson born through the male line was the illegitimate Charles Somerset, but neither of his grandparents were alive to see him legitimised in 1514 and created Earl of Worcester. Where the Stafford name had narrowly survived, depending upon just one individual, this branch of the Beaufort name was lost because the one male child had been born out of wedlock. The fortunes of aristocratic lines were easily lost or broken during this period, as much in the bedroom as on the battlefield. Yet, as some were to discover, the birth of legitimate, healthy, peaceful male heirs was no guarantee of continuity in the face of an enemy determined to eradicate the threat they posed. In the coming years, fewer young men would die in battle; the greatest danger they faced was untreatable illness.