Of all the sons of York associated with the Tower of London, it is Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury, the ‘Princes in the Tower’, whose stories are the most well-known. Their disappearance prompted the sinister connotations of a royal palace turned into a prison, its thick stone walls no longer welcomed as defensive, but as the means of incarcerating two innocent children for nothing but the circumstances of their birth. It is a concept that has fired the imagination of historians and tourists ever since but, rightfully, their third Yorkist cousin, Edward, Earl of Warwick, is equally deserving of the association. The princes may have spent the final months of their lives in captivity there but, after their disappearance, Edward was incarcerated behind the same forbidding walls for thirteen years, more than half his life. Another potential King of England, perhaps with a greater claim to the throne than Richard III or Henry VII, lived and died within the Tower’s walls. Just like his cousins, his bloodline rendered him too dangerous to live.
Edward, Earl of Warwick is a shadowy figure about whom little information survives beyond the threat he posed to the throne. Unusually, he had claims on both the Yorkist and Lancastrian side, through his parentage and by nomination respectively. His Lancastrian credentials were established five years before his birth, as the result of his father’s treason against his elder brother, casting a long shadow over the existence of his future children. In 1469, George, Duke of Clarence had allied with Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick out of disaffection with Edward IV, by marrying Neville’s daughter Isabel. The following year, Henry VI recognised Clarence as heir to the Lancastrian throne after his own son, Edward of Westminster. When Isabel bore a surviving son, Edward, in 1475, Henry VI had been dead for four years, as had his son, Prince Edward. Technically, according to the wishes of the last Lancastrian, George and Isabel’s son could be seen to have a stronger claim to the Lancastrian throne than Henry VII.
Edward’s parents were never supposed to have wed. Yet this was no romantic elopement, no love match; they were hardly the Romeo and Juliet of their age, as their flight might suggest. It was the fruition of a daring plan which saw Edward IV’s two closest companions turn against him, fleeing England after the king vetoed the marriage. Warwick had been considering the 19-year-old duke as a potential son-in-law for at least two years and given that the king had not yet fathered a son of his own, any male heir born to George would be next in line to the throne. Clarence was ‘seemly of person and visage’, but a more volatile figure than his older brother, driven by ambition and frustrated by the restraints he felt the king imposed upon him. His household at Tutbury Castle in 1468 cost an annual £4,500, making it larger and more expensive than that of the king.1 Isabel was two years younger, the elder of Neville’s two daughters, between whom his vast inheritance would be divided. Aware of the king’s opposition, Warwick had sent his own representative to the pope that March to obtain a dispensation for the match to go ahead, and then secured a special licence from Cardinal Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury for it to take place. They sailed from Sandwich in July for the safety of Calais, where Warwick had recently been captain. In the castle chapel dedicated to the Virgin, or in the main Calais church of Our Lady, they became man and wife on 12 July 1469.
The wedding was celebrated with conspicuous display. Warwick planned several days of festivities suitable for a royal wedding and invited various important guests, including five knights of the garter, and various Neville family members. The ceremony itself was conducted by Warwick’s brother George Neville, Archbishop of York. It was crucial to the earl’s plans that the proceedings were legitimate and public, above question, unlike the secret nuptials of the king and Elizabeth Woodville five years earlier. Warwick was establishing an alternative royal family, whose progeny he hoped would inherit the throne. Any lingering suspicions of romance regarding the match can be dispelled by the fact that Clarence and Warwick did not linger long to enjoy the event. Five days later they sailed for England with a manifesto of grievances, modelled on that of Jack Cade’s revolt in 1450, with which to challenge Edward IV.
The challenge of 1469 failed, as did Warwick’s coup and readeption of Henry VI in 1470. The earl was killed in battle, Clarence was forgiven and fought at his brother’s side at Tewkesbury. However, his transgressions were not forgotten. George and Isabel settled at Warwick Castle and their London residence of Coldharbour House. Having lost a first child, Isabel was at Farleigh Hungerford Castle in Somerset when she bore her daughter Margaret in August 1473 and back home at Warwick Castle for the birth of Edward in February 1475. His uncle and namesake was one of his godfathers, ordering that the boy be called Earl of Warwick from his birth. Edward was two months short of his second birthday when his mother died, probably from complications or injuries following the birth of her fourth child, possibly from consumption. She was only 25. This event precipitated a crisis in the family, setting Clarence on the path to destruction and disgrace that would determine the future path of his son’s life.
Four months after Isabel’s death, George became convinced that she had been poisoned by one of her ladies-in-waiting, an elderly woman named Ankarette Twynho of Keyford in Somerset. Travelling down from Warwick on 12 April, with around eighty men, he abducted Ankarette from her house and took her to Bath. The next day, he carried her to Cirencester, Gloucester and then to prison in Warwick, where she was deprived of her money, jewels and goods. He ordered Ankarette’s daughter, son-in-law and servants out of the city and convened a court at the Guildhall before the justices of the peace who were sitting in the Easter Assizes. There, he ‘caused her to be indicted, of having at Warwick, on 10 October 1476, given to the said Isabel a venomous drink of ale mixed with poison, of which the latter sickened until the Sunday before Christmas, on which day she died’. The nature of the poison was not specified, although it must have been exceptionally slow-working for its effects not to have proved lethal for over seventy days.
Also standing trial with her was John Thursby, another former servant of the family, whom Clarence accused of having poisoned Isabel’s newborn son with ale administered on 21 December. The child, Richard, had died on 1 January. Under considerable pressure from the duke, the justices arraigned the pair, the jury convicted them and they were hanged ‘within three hours of the said Tuesday, and the jurors for fear gave the verdict contrary to their conscience, in proof thereof divers of them came to the said Ankarette in remorse and asked her forgiveness’. Many said that:
in consideration of the imaginations of the said Duke and his great might, the unlawful taking of the said Ankarette through three several shires, the inordinate hasty process and judgement, her lamentable death and her good disposition, the King should ordain that the record, process, verdict and judgment should be void and of no effect.2
However, by then it was too late.
Clarence’s erratic behaviour worsened. At 27, he might realistically have anticipated taking a second wife with international connections and independent wealth. Yet Edward rejected his plans to remarry, first to Mary of Burgundy, stepdaughter of his sister Margaret, then to a Scottish princess. Clarence felt this deeply, and became convinced that the king was seeking to poison him ‘as a candle is consumed by burning’. When two members of his household were arrested on the charge of being necromancers and ‘imagining the King’s death’, for which they suffered the full fate of traitors at Tyburn, Clarence burst into a meeting of Edward’s council and read aloud their declaration of innocence from the scaffold. Edward had forgiven much, but this time George had gone too far. He was summoned to Westminster, where Edward denounced him for ‘most serious [misconduct] … in contempt of the law of the land and a great threat to judges and jurors of the kingdom’, and ordered his arrest.
The act of attainder against George, delivered by Edward to a specially convened Parliament in January 1478, reveals the king’s deep sense of betrayal over his brother’s continuing hostilities. Edward began by recalling ‘the manifold great conspiracies, malicious and heinous treasons’ that had so far arisen by ‘unnatural subjects, rebels and traitors’ against his realm, with the ‘intent and purpose to have destroyed his most royal person and with that to have subverted the state and well-being’ of the country. But Edward had repelled them, with ‘great labour and diligence’, with chivalry and war, and the help of God, punishing them by the sword or other means. Yet, as a ‘benign and gracious prince, moved to pity’, he had not only often spared them, but taken them to his mercy and pardoned them. Despite this, it had lately come to his attention that a ‘much higher, much more malicious, more unnatural and loathly treason’ had been hatched against himself, the queen and their children, which proceeded from the most extreme malice, ‘incomparably exceeding any other that had been before’. Worst of all, it had been ‘contrived, imagined and conspired by the person that of all earthly creatures, beside the duty of allegiance, nature, benefit and gratitude’ was the most ‘bounden and beholden, to dreaded, loved, honoured and ever thanked the King most largely’. To name the perpetrator ‘greatly aggrieved the heart of our Sovereign Lord, save only that he was compelled by necessity for the surety, wealth and tranquillity of himself and all his realm’. ‘We sheweth you, therefore’, the speech went on, ‘that all this hath been entended by his brother, George, Duke of Clarence’. The king had ‘ever loved and cherished him’ due to his tender age, and given him ‘so large proportion of possessions’ that no one could recall a king of England formerly rewarding a brother so. Edward had trusted that, not only by the bonds of nature, but by those of so great benefit, George would be ‘more than others loving, helping, assisting and obedient’ despite the times he had previously given great offence to the king and the realm. Now George had daily increased in malice and conspired new treasons against Edward and his family, attempting to entice away the affection of the king’s subjects and speak out against his justice. Thus he must die.
George’s ultimate aim was the throne and, to this end, he was responsible for spreading the rumour that ‘the Kinge oure Sovereigne Lord was a bastard and not begotten’ to reign. George had also cited Henry VI’s statement that ‘if the said Henry and Edward his first begotten son died without issue male of their body, that the said Duke and his heirs should be King of this land’. The indictment also included a strange clause about George’s son, Edward, still only 2 years old. Apparently, the duke had ordered an abbot and two other men to ‘cause a strange child to have been brought into his castle of Warwick, and there to have been put and kept in the likeness of his son and heir’ while his true son, Edward, ‘was conveyed and sent … into Ireland, or into Flanders out of this land, whereby he might have gotten him assurance and favour against our said sovereign Lord’. The two men concerned denied delivering such a child, but the implications of the claim for the appearance of pretenders during the reign of Henry VII are significant.3
On 18 February, Clarence was executed in the Tower of London, although his relationship with his brother may have allowed him to choose the means of his death. The chroniclers Mancini and Jean de Roye both state that he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine; the continuer of the Croyland text, who witnessed the trial, was also aware of this rumour, but unsure of its veracity. It seems telling that no other source cites any other method, suggesting that Edward allowed his brother this final indulgence. He also paid for an expensive funeral and a monument to be erected in Tewkesbury Abbey. Isabel’s bones had lain in state in the abbey for thirty-five days so it is likely that George’s also went through a similar process of observation before being interred beside her in a vault located behind the high altar, close to the Beauchamp Chapel. The monument has long since been destroyed and the tomb opened so many times to be cleaned that all traces of the original burial have been lost. The bones on display in a glass case, reputedly belonging to George and Isabel, have been tested and identified as being too advanced in age to be either. When the vault was opened in 1826, it was discovered to be 9ft by 8ft, and 6ft 4in high, carved from Painswick stone with a large central cross made of painted bricks. Upon these bricks were the arms of England, of Clarence and other heraldic families, birds, fleur de lys and ornamented letters. It was concluded at the time that the vault had been ransacked during the Reformation.4
Edward was a week short of his third birthday when his father was sentenced to death, while his sister was 5. Though they might have had different establishments within the castle, surely his sister would have noticed the substitution of her brother? Assuming that it was the real Edward who had been left behind in Warwick Castle, not an imposter, all was set to change. It is unlikely that he retained any memories of either of his parents but he would have learned, as the years passed, that the extensive lands he should have received were taken into royal custody, technically for the duration of his minority. He could look forward to a rich inheritance once he finally came of age. After his father’s death, Edward was placed in the royal custody of his uncle and aunt, the king and queen, presumably attached to their court. A single surviving payment in the accounts for 1480 lists five pairs of shoes with double and single soles for his use. The following year, when he was 5 or 6, Edward’s wardship was bought for £2,000 by Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, the queen’s son by her first marriage. Grey was then 25 and may have lived at the family’s seat of Groby in Leicestershire. He had married his second wife in September 1474 and their young family included boys who were just a little younger than Edward himself.
At the change of regime in 1483, Thomas Grey was among the Woodville relations who lost royal favour. This did not affect Edward adversely, unless the removal from Grey’s wardship upset him, but this can only be speculation. He was taken under the wing of Richard III and Queen Anne, attending their coronation and being knighted alongside Edward of Middleham in York on 8 September 1483. After this, Warwick was established at Sheriff Hutton Castle with his sister Margaret, Richard’s illegitimate son John of Pontefact and possibly other children with Yorkist connections. On 8 June 1484, Richard commanded lengths of cloth of gold, silk and velvet to be ordered for clothing to be made for Edward and Margaret, as well as for Richard’s illegitimate daughter Katherine and her husband-to-be, William Herbert, Earl of Huntingdon. Given that Katherine’s marriage took place that year, this was likely in preparation for that event, suggesting that Edward and his sister attended the ceremony.
After the death of Edward of Middleham, his cousin Warwick could potentially have become Richard’s heir. He was of a similar age to the dead boy and had a strong claim to the role. Richard may have considered this briefly but by 1485 seemed inclined to prefer John of Lincoln, leading some to suspect some infirmity or defect in Warwick. Decades later, Edward was described as being unable to distinguish between a goose and a capon, but this was after long years in captivity and indicates his naivety and inexperience rather than any want of intellect. We are told this by the chronicler Edward Hall, who was born two years before Edward’s death, and his words were prefaced by the explanation that Edward had been ‘kept in the Tower from his tender age, that is to say from his first year of the King [Henry VII] to this fifteenth year, out of all company of men and sight of beasts’.5 Richard’s advancement of John over Edward may also have been decided by the fact that Lincoln was then a full-grown man, while Edward was only 9 at time of his cousin’s death and far less likely to be of assistance in facing challenges to the throne. Technically, too, Lincoln had the senior claim, being descended from the Duke of York’s fourth surviving child, although this was through the female line, while Warwick came from the sixth survivor. Yet there is a far more significant reason why the new king wished to pass over this young nephew. Richard is unlikely to have wanted to draw attention to the fact that Edward had a better claim to the throne than himself, being the son of his elder brother. He had used the illegitimacy card against Edward IV’s sons, but there was no question that Warwick had not been conceived in lawful matrimony, so the earl had to remain under the cloud of his father’s attainder. To recognise Edward would be to acknowledge a weakness in Richard’s own right to rule.
Edward was living at Sheriff Hutton with his cousins Princess Elizabeth and her sisters during the summer of 1485. He was 10½, quite aware of the danger the Yorkist regime was facing but likely to have been confident in his uncle’s military ambitions compared with the inexperience of his Tudor challenger. No doubt his lessons proceeded as usual, perhaps even under the care of Anne Idley, whose pedagogical skills had been redundant at Middleham since the death of Richard’s son. Edward would have mourned the loss of the little cousin beside whom he had been knighted, and then the death of his aunt Anne, the queen, that March. Perhaps he was dressed in mourning still. Yet there was a very real possibility that, after Richard’s victory, he would marry a Princess of Portugal and Edward would be summoned to Westminster to grow up at court, in training as a future Yorkist magnate. Soon after 22 August, though, Sheriff Hutton received news that snatched away this hope and consigned Edward to a much darker path. Richard had been killed and the invader had been crowned Henry VII on the battlefield.
After the defeat at Bosworth, Edward was fetched under heavy guard from Sheriff Hutton and placed in the care of the new king’s mother. Margaret Beaufort, then in her early forties, was an astute, energetic, pious and immensely capable woman. Edward may have been with her at court, or dwelt at one of her many properties in London or in the country. Yet Margaret had a conflict of interests. She had shown interest in the Ware estate in Hertfordshire, which was part of Edward’s inheritance from his mother Isabel, securing the right to appoint a steward there that September and being granted the place in 1487. The same year, she received the rich Warwick property of Canford in Dorset and, four years later, petitioned Parliament for four other estates that were part of the boy’s legacy.6 By this time, Edward had left her care and was lodged in the Tower, diminishing the likelihood that he would ever enjoy the lands left to him by his parents. Margaret was fully aware that her actions were unscrupulous but her conscience did not trouble her until later. In 1504, she obtained a pardon for all the ‘purchases, alienations or intrusions … that had occurred during the minority of Edward, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, son and heir of Isabel, Duchess of Clarence’.7 But by this point it was safe for her to show contrition about her possessions, as Edward had been dead for five years.
While living with Margaret, Edward and his sister may well have attended the wedding of their first cousin, the 19-year-old Elizabeth of York, to England’s new king, which took place at Westminster on 18 January 1486. It was a good move for the new king, as Elizabeth represented the Yorkist claim and came from a notoriously fertile family, which was critical given that Henry was an only child. Edward could have been a guest at the ceremony in Westminster Abbey and the feast that followed in the hall. Eight months later, ‘my lady Margaret of Clarence’, was listed as being among the guests gathered in Winchester to attend the birth of the couple’s first child, Prince Arthur. Given that their other male cousin, John de la Pole, was also in attendance, it seems likely that Edward witnessed the occasion too. Henry usually practised the policy of keeping his enemies close, under his exacting supervision, which argues in favour of Edward’s attendance. However, there was a difference between Edward and his sister and cousin. Just like Edward, Margaret and John were close members of the Yorkist family, cousins of the bride but, unlike them, Edward had a better claim of descent to the English throne. In terms of bloodline, Margaret and John did not pose the immediate threat that Edward did as the heir to the former ruling dynasty.
The opening years of the new Tudor regime were marred by threats of invasion and rebellion. Unless any of these came to fruition on his behalf – which they did not – Edward could only suffer, being a dangerous figurehead for the new regime. In April 1486, Humphrey Stafford and Francis Lovell attempted to seize Henry during a visit to York. Lovell escaped to Margaret of Burgundy in Flanders, where he would soon be joined by John, Earl of Lincoln, but Stafford attempted to raise troops against the king in Worcestershire. Worryingly for Edward, Stafford’s followers were indicted for shouting pro-Warwick battle cries, suggesting that they were rising in his name or with the intention of using him as a figurehead. In May, an unruly mob gathered near Highbury in London bearing banners depicting the badge of the earls of Warwick – the bear and ragged staff. The uprising was defeated, and Stafford was forcibly removed from his sanctuary in Culham and executed in July. This rebellion, or similar sentiments, gave rise to rumours that Edward had escaped from England and was also in Flanders, or else in Guernsey. It was probably this episode that prompted Henry to lodge Edward in the Tower of London. Around this time, John, Earl of Lincoln stole away to join Lambert Simnel and further rumours reached the king that the imposter was claiming to be Edward. In February 1487, when he was 11, Edward was brought out of the Tower and made to walk to St Paul’s to hear mass and show himself praying, and talking afterwards to people in the nave of the church. He was allowed out of the Tower again after the Battle of Stoke. That July, on Relic Sunday, Warwick walked through the streets beside the captured Simnel: two young boys symbolising the dangers faced by the Tudor regime. Perhaps he was also allowed out that November for the coronation of his cousin Elizabeth, on whom his sister was in attendance. Edward may have also been permitted to witness the wedding of the 14-year-old Margaret to Richard Pole, which appears to have taken place around this time. Or it may be that by this point, Edward was considered too dangerous to be permitted such freedoms.
It is impossible to determine just how far Edward understood his situation. He was certainly aware of his inheritance and proximity to the throne, but if he ever coveted it, no record remains of such intent. Nor is it clear that he understood what was happening outside London, and that Simnel had been crowned in Dublin after assuming his name and impersonating him. Edward was still a child, and was carefully schooled in advance of his two appearances in the city that year,8 but he can hardly have been unaware of the disappearance of his two cousins, the sons of Edward IV, or that he was now at the mercy of an enemy regime. With hindsight, it seems that his fate was inevitable. It may have appeared so at the time.
The plots against Henry continued. By the early 1490s, three men in particular were focused on ousting the new king in favour of Edward, Earl of Warwick, whom they saw as the rightful King of England. The first, Robert Chamberlain, had been in exile with Edward IV in 1470 and had been Chancellor of Ireland. He also had links with Scotland and France. He had been placed under house arrest in 1487 and forbidden to travel more than a mile from his Chertsey home due to suspicion of treason, perhaps the result of a connection to the Simnel/Lincoln uprising. Second, a Norfolk gentleman, Richard White, entered into treasonous arrangements with the King of France to attack and kill Henry in the summer of 1490, although this was conceived as a murder or assassination rather than a conflict in battle. White was arrested in 1491 as he attempted to flee to Flanders. The third man was John Taylor, a former servant of the Duke of Clarence, later a yeoman of the king’s chamber in the households of Edward IV and Richard III. Taylor held Clarence’s son to be the rightful King of England and although he was still living in London in January 1489, he had escaped to France by September 1491.
Taylor seems to have been the driving force behind it all. His objections to Henry prefaced the main threat to his reign that was about to arise in the person of the imposter Perkin Warbeck, then neatly allied with them. Initially, Taylor wanted a rebellion of the English people against the Tudor regime, drawing on the old affinities of the Neville family, the Duke and Duchess of Clarence, the Beauchamps, Richard III’s northern allies and those loyal to the Duke of Norfolk. Taylor was a rallying point for Yorkist loyalists as John, Earl of Lincoln had formerly been; he was of more humble social status, but his loyalties were firmly with Edward, Earl of Warwick. Taylor had fled to Rouen but returned in secret to visit friends based in the south-east, including Thomas Gale, a Neville supporter, and John Hayes, a long-standing servant of Clarence, with whom he discussed the earl’s claim.9 Taylor also managed to harness the support of the French king. After he had returned to Rouen, he wrote a letter to Hayes, which was delivered to him that November, describing how Charles VIII of France had decided to back the cause of Edward of Warwick and considered the plotters to be his allies, ‘knowen for true men to the quarell’. Charles would support any rebels who chose to flee into exile ‘for the wrong he did in making Henry King of England and for the gode he oweth unto the Sonne of youre maister Clarence for they be nere of kin’.10 Hayes was asked to select a suitable location for the French invasion force to land. It may have been on his suggestion that, when the rebels left Honfleur in November, they headed for Ireland. But Hayes was being closely watched. He couldn’t escape to join Taylor, and was arrested in December 1491.
It was in Cork, in late 1491, that Taylor and his companions reputedly discovered Perkin Warbeck strolling along the street and saw the opportunity he presented. The young man seems to have been the son of a Flemish couple based in Tournai; he confessed as much under duress, and research undertaken by James Gairdner in 1898 supports the claim. Having been apprenticed to a merchant, Warbeck was in the employment of a Breton trader named Pregent or Pierre Jean Meno, who had taken him to Ireland. Here, dressed up in silks as a kind of mannequin to display the wares on offer, he drew the attention of Taylor and former mayor John Atwater, with his looks and regal bearing. Either Taylor and his friends induced him to become the figurehead of their rebellion or convinced him that he was King Edward IV’s illegitimate son.11 An alternative version of events suggests that Warbeck was already pushing his claim to the English throne and had tried to gain Burgundian support in 1490, without success, so he willingly embraced the chance offered by Taylor, perhaps even instigated it. Whichever way around it happened, here emerged a young man with whom Edward’s future would become bound.
Behind the solid walls of the Tower, Edward could only be aware of any developments in the outside world that his gaolers drew to his attention. In February 1489, he had turned 14, officially of age to rule, had he been king. Even though ‘full’ age was not considered to have been reached until 21, Edward was now of an age to question his position, his inheritance and his unjust lot. Perhaps he started asking when he might receive his lands, or if he would be able to administer them. The attainder against his father for treason and the confiscation of his lands by the crown was never reversed. However, it made no mention of his children and such acts were frequently overturned, or lands reinstated to those heirs who had been innocent of wrongdoing. It was precisely because young children were considered blameless that Edward’s grandfather, Richard, Third Duke of York, had been able to inherit his uncle’s titles even though his father had been executed for treason.
Edward may have heard that Henry had sent a fleet to France in retaliation against Charles VIII in June 1492. One thousand five hundred men landed on the coast of Normandy and proceeded to destroy the countryside and burn forty-five ships in the harbour over the space of a month and a half. The following year, he might have been told that the pretender Perkin Warbeck had been recognised as King Richard IV by the Emperor Maximilian. In 1495, when Edward was 20, Warbeck attempted to land off the English coast at Deal in ships supplied and equipped by Margaret of Burgundy. Due to the resistance of the people of Kent, the invasion failed before it had begun, sending Warbeck fleeing to Ireland, then Scotland. It did, however, claim one significant victim. Sir William Stanley, a long-standing Yorkist, had fought for Edward’s grandfather as far back as 1459. He had served under Edward IV and Richard III, but defected to the Tudors at Bosworth, for which he was rewarded with the positions of Lord Chamberlain and Chamberlain of the Exchequer in Henry’s household. Now, though, he was arrested on flimsy evidence for supporting Warbeck as a Yorkist prince. In hopes of leniency, Stanley admitted his crime, but found himself sentenced to death after having offered the necessary evidence. He was executed in February 1495. A year later, Edward, Earl of Warwick turned 21 and reached full age. He had spent the last decade locked in the Tower for good reason: there were still many dissident voices who believed that he was the true King of England.
Shortly after Stanley’s execution, the matriarch of the York dynasty died. Cecily Neville was the mother of Edward IV; George, Duke of Clarence; Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy; Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk; and Richard III. Among her many grandchildren were Edward V and his brother in the Tower, Richard of York, Edward of Warwick and his sister Margaret, John de la Pole and his brothers, and Edward of Middleham. Her death marked the end of a dynastic era, but also illustrates an aspect of late medieval death practices which bore similarities and differences to those of the other royal grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville. In the final years of her life, Cecily had withdrawn to Berkhamsted Castle in Hertfordshire, where she lived as a vowess, in contemplation and seclusion. Her daily regime was similar to that in a nunnery, but on her own terms, in her own home: she rose at seven, prayed as she dressed, heard mass, followed by divine service and more masses; after dinner she heard religious texts read aloud, spent an hour on business, napped briefly and read prayers until evensong, dined and then related the day’s sermon to her household. She began to dictate her will in the first days of April 1495, in ‘hole mynd and body’, surrendering her soul to God and requesting that her body be buried beside that of her husband, who had lain at Fotheringhay since his reinterment in 1476. Death had separated them over thirty-four years earlier. Cecily distributed bequests among her surviving family members, including Henry VII, to whom she left money and two gold cups; to Queen Elizabeth she left a diamond cross, a psalter and a reliquary; to their eldest son, Prince Arthur, she gave embroidered bed hangings; and to his brother, Prince Henry, the future Henry VIII, she left three arras hangings. Many of the items in other bequests were religious in nature, from books on the lives of saints and mass books, to altar cloths, copes and chasubles. All her remaining plate was to be sold to pay for her funeral, for the ‘carrying of my body from the castell of Barkehampstead unto the college of Foderinghey’ and, with that imminent event in mind, she signed her name and added the imprint of her seal to the document on 31 May. Cecily was buried in the church of St Mary and All Saints, in the tomb she had seen created in 1476. Ninety years later, after her resting place had been disturbed by the Reformation, Cecily’s grave was opened. The bodies of the duke and duchess were observed, ‘very plainly to be discerned’, including the silk ribbon Cecily wore around her neck, from which was hung a papal dispensation, a remission for earthly sins ‘penned in a very fine Romane hand … as faire and fresh to be read, as it had been written yesterday’.12 It was typical of a late medieval aristocrat facing death to purchase such an item in the hope that it would ease their passage through purgatory. Soon after Cecily’s soul had faced its own personal battle, a new threat was about to engulf her descendants.
In May 1497, heavy taxation in Cornwall sparked an uprising. After marching to London, the rebels were swiftly dispelled by a royal army at Blackheath but returned to the south-west to regroup and invited Warbeck to lead them. Hearing of this development, Henry pursued them to Exeter, where he won a decisive victory, forcing the pretender to seek sanctuary in Beaulieu Abbey. Warbeck made a full confession after the king offered to treat him leniently and was brought back to London, where he was kept under close guard at court. This state of affairs continued until June 1498, when Warbeck escaped from Richmond Palace during the night, reputedly by climbing out of a window. It is likely that Edward of Warwick’s servants and gaolers kept him informed when the fugitive was recaptured, for now the earl was to have company of a sort. Perkin Warbeck, around the same age as him, and claiming to be his cousin, was to be brought to the Tower. Soon they were lodged one above the other, as Warbeck occupied the room directly beneath Warwick. Before long, they were in communication.
The plot against Henry VII, which would claim Edward’s life, centred around the two men who were responsible for keeping the prisoners secure in the Tower. Robert Cleymond, a ‘gentleman of London’, was Warwick’s ‘keeper’, sleeping beside him in confinement, while the same role was taken by a John Astwood for Perkin Warbeck. Astwood and Cleymond were already interested in the fate of Edward, Earl of Warwick. In February 1498, they had visited the house of a London haberdasher named John Finch, who told them of a prophecy stating that the bear (Warwick) would ‘shortly beat his chains within the city of London’.13 Finch wanted Edward informed of these prophetic words and also charged Cleymond to pass on a gift for the earl of two pairs of gloves and a pot of green ginger. At the time of Warbeck’s arrest later that year, Cleymond and Astwood were working closely together, in proximity to the two young prisoners. Soon a hole had been knocked in the floor between the two rooms to allow for communication and letters were passed from one window to another on a long white thread.14
Then, early in 1499, another imposter appeared. A young man named Ralph Wilford, or Wulford, presumably bearing some physical similarities to the York family, announced that he was Edward, Earl of Warwick. He was actually the son of a London cordwainer from the Black Bull, Bishopsgate, who was then studying at Cambridge, and was slightly younger than the earl, being aged around 20. Like the boy Lambert Simnel, Wilford was encouraged by others, in this case a priest, who trained him in the necessary arts, although Wilford claimed that the idea had come to him in a dream. His appearance was preceded by a whispering campaign purporting to warn Henry VII that he was rapidly approaching the worst year of his reign. Henry sat up and took notice. Wilford surfaced in Kent, claiming to have escaped from the Tower but, before he could take any action, he was swiftly arrested and confessed his true identity. He was hung on 12 February, showing Henry again that such claims would continue so long as the earl was alive. Perhaps Wilford’s effort was the final straw that prompted the king to act. Warwick would be dead nine months later.
Many historians have long been of the opinion that the case against Warwick and Warbeck was a convenient fabrication at best, a cynical trap at worst. Reputedly, it was Warbeck who instigated the plan. However, just how much prompting and suggestion he received from Cleymond and Astwood can only be guessed at. The intention was to seize the Tower, take money from the treasury, gunpowder from the ordnance and blow the place up. In the resulting chaos, they were to escape to a boat on the Thames and sail to France. There, they would issue a rallying cry to rebels to join their cause, offering them 12d a day from the stolen funds. According to the evidence which Henry passed to his Council, Warwick had agreed to help Warbeck if he proved to be his cousin, Richard, Duke of York, as he claimed. If not, then he said he would claim the throne for himself. Warwick was given a dagger or short sword in preparation for the attempted break out, but other sources suggest he hardly knew what he was supposed to do with it.15 The circumstances of the two young men could hardly have been more different, even though they had ultimately led them to the same place. It seems most likely that Warbeck was a pretender to the throne who had stuck to his plans over almost a decade, despite repeated opportunities to repent, or to disappear. He had put himself in the king’s way, wishing him harm, and Henry thus had justification for his incarceration. Warwick, on the other hand, had never put a foot wrong, and the danger he posed to Henry was entirely due to his parentage and the schemes of Yorkist supporters. Potentially naïve, but facing the remainder of his life in the Tower, it is not surprising that Warwick was tempted to go along with an individual to whom he may have genuinely believed he was related.
The plot developed through the spring of 1499, by exchange of messages enabled by the two keepers. Exactly how much Henry knew about it is cause for speculation. It may be that the entire thing was his scheme from the start, or else he was informed by a subject, or spy, once it was underway. Early in August Cleymond told Warwick that the plot had been discovered and he was fleeing into sanctuary, No record survives of what happened to Cleymond and Astwood subsequently. They don’t appear to have suffered the traitor’s death that was inflicted upon Warbeck, or gone to the block like Warwick, which makes it difficult to resist the suggestion that they were, in fact, working for Henry, leading the two young men into the plot. The whole thing may have been a trap originating with the king, who used Cleymond to rid himself of two significant enemies. In addition, there appears to be no shred of evidence to support the claims or accounts of treasonous conversation, all of which relied solely upon the word of the accusers.16 Warwick and Warbeck must have endured anxious months before being summoned for trial in November.
There is no doubt that the continued existence of Warwick and Warbeck proved a stumbling block for the negotiations that Henry was attempting to conclude for his eldest son’s Spanish marriage. He finally decided to be rid of the two young men, after years of trouble from them, or on their behalf, and oblige the Spanish at the same time. This is not to deny that both did pose a significant threat to his throne as figureheads of discontent and that it was a sound policy to ally with the powerful Spaniards against the French. As far back as 1493, Margaret of Burgundy had written to Ferdinand and Isabella to endorse Warbeck as a real son of York, to which the pretender had added his own version of his ‘escape’ from London as a child. Two years later, the Spanish ambassador, de Puebla, wrote to Catherine of Aragon’s parents about the threat posed by Perkin Warbeck, comparing it to that of Lambert Simnel, but calling him the Duke of Clarence, ‘who was crowned King of Ireland and afterwards discovered to be the son of a barber’. He advised the Spanish that if the emperor supported Warbeck, it would prove ‘very difficult to conclude what your highnesses wish’.17 Just how significant was the role of Spanish pressure in this case must be balanced beside the cumulative years of threat and uncertainty that Henry VII had experienced. He had shown leniency towards Warbeck in a time when rebels and traitors were far safer dead, and Warbeck had continued to plot against him, as had others. In the autumn of 1499, Henry resolved to draw a line under these dangers and to move his dynasty forward with the validation of the most important dynasty in Europe. Harnessed to Warbeck’s cause at the last minute, Edward, Earl of Warwick was an inevitable casualty of all these factors.
It is not clear exactly what Edward knew, or understood, about the process of his indictment and sentence of treason. He must have been told that Warbeck had been found guilty and hanged at Tyburn on 16 November. Five days later, during a brief, formal trial at Westminster, Edward confessed to the charges against him and was sentenced to death. No matter how unjust, or contrived, he had little choice but to accept it. What can be stated for certain is that he is the first young man included in this book to have had some warning of his imminent end, some time to prepare himself for when death came as a controlled act, rather than on the battlefield, at the hand of an assassin or through illness. In the medieval mind, the ability to prepare for the final moment, to pray and be at peace, was essential in making a ‘good’ death. While living a good life was important, it was not the deciding factor for the afterlife, as those who had sinned could be accepted into heaven so long as they died well, having repented and asked for forgiveness. Death was considered to be a great battlefield on which the Devil made his final assault for the human soul, and needed to be resisted with every possible spiritual weapon.
A text printed by William Caxton in the 1490s, possibly by the prolific fourteenth-century writer Richard Rolle, captured the importance of approaching death in the right frame of mind by elevating it into an art form. The Book of the Craft of Dying captures the stages that Edward’s confessors would have tried to make him accept as he lived through his final hours. All medieval people knew that death was inevitable and imminent. It had not yet become the distant abstraction that better health, medicine, sanitation, emergency care and safety have made it; the conclusion of every mystery play is the soul’s departure into heaven or hell and it was a stage to be welcomed. ‘Death is nothing else but a going out of prison and an ending of exile,’ according to the book: ‘a discharging of an heavy burden that is the body, finishing of all infirmities, a scaping of all perils, destroying of all evil things, breaking of all bonds, and entering into bliss and joy’. Edward, and anyone else who had warning of their death, should embrace what was to come, according to the teachings of St Paul: ‘I deserve and covet to be dead, and be with Christ.’ Caxton’s volume continues with the advice that ‘to die well is to die gladly and wilfully … without any grudging or contradiction … to learn to die is to have an heart and a soul ever ready up to Godward, that when that ever death comes, he may be found all ready.’18
Caxton also published a copy of Speculum Artis Moriendi, a version of a tract composed around 1415, as part of a swathe of writing about death in the wake of the plague. It follows the same pattern as the Rolle version, conforming to a six-part structure which includes sections on consolation, avoiding temptation, questions for the dying to lead them to the light, the imitation of Christ, rules for the behaviour of family and friends at the bedside and the final prayers. In his final hours, Edward would have been exhorted not to die doubting his faith, losing hope and despairing, not to die in impatience, or complacence or in pleasing himself, or in concerns about his worldly state. Edward had no wife, children, friends, riches or properties whose loss to regret, no actual life beyond his existence within the Tower’s walls. Whatever the injustice of his cause, the result of his parentage, he would have resigned himself to leave life behind and embrace death. It was considered essential that a crucifix and image of Our Lady be kept in the presence of those about to die and Edward would have directed his prayers towards them, as well as to any other particular saints he favoured. His priest would have blessed him and sprinkled him with holy water as the final prayer was recited. These would have been among the last, if not the last, words of comfort that Edward heard:
Lord Jesu Christ, son of the fatherly charity, I beseech thee by the Love that Thou, right much worthy, right innocent and most delicate, madest Thyself to be as man, to be wounded and die for the health of man, that Thy wilt pardon and forgive this Thy servant (insert name.) Jesus, right merciful, forgive him all that by thought, by word or deed, by affections or movings, by his strength and by his wit, of body and of soul, he hath trespassed. And for remission, give to him, Lord, that right sufficient emendation by the which Thou unboundest the sins of all the world; and, for the fulfilling of all negligences, join to him that right ready and valiant conversation, that Thou haddest, sith and from the hour of Thy conception unto the hour of Thy death. And moreover give to him the fruit of all the good works made and done by all the chosen saints, sith the beginning of the world unto the end. Qui vivis et regnas Deus per omnia secula seculorum. (Who lives and reigns as God for ever and ever.)
In the honour of the right fervent love by the which the life of all living constrained Thee to be incarnate, and in anguish of spirit to die on the cross, we remember on, anew, Thy right benign heart to the end that to this, Thy servant (insert name) our brother, Thy put away all his sins, and that Thou forgive him all, by Thy right holy conversation and by the merit of Thy right holy passion; that Thou make him to experiment the superabundant of Thy miserations, and that Thou make ready us all, and in especial this person, Thy brother (insert name) whom Thou has disposed hastily to call to Thee by right pleasant manner; and that it be to him right profitable by Thy sweet patience, by very penance, by plain remission, by rightful faith, by steadfast hope, by right perfect charity; in such wise that in right perfect state he may blessedly depart and expire between Thy right sweet embracements and company, to Thy praising eternal. Amen.
Edward had a week to make his final confession and set his affairs in order. Given his sheltered life in the Tower, it cannot have taken long. He was executed on 28 November on Tower Green, at the age of 24. No accounts survive of how he met his end, which rather suggests it was a straightforward event. Edward, Earl of Warwick was buried at Bisham Abbey, where his rebellious grandfather, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, had been laid to rest twenty-eight years earlier. The abbey is no longer standing, having been a victim of the Reformation, but the thirteenth-century manor house remains, close to the place where Edward was finally buried. No details survive about his tomb, if he had one. Just like his young cousin Edward V, Warwick had lived a blameless life, guilty only of being born where and when he was. Thus, like the little murdered king, he can be said to be a victim of his circumstances, and more than most. The only suggestion of any wrongdoing on Edward’s part was put forward in the final indictment against him, which rested entirely on the words of those who were also implicated, or had led him into his friendship with Warbeck.
The initial significance of his death, along with that of Warbeck, was for English national security, allowing Henry VII’s match with Spain to proceed. On 11 January 1500, de Puebla wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella that:
England has never before been so tranquil and obedient as at present. There have always been pretenders to the crown of England but now that Perkin and the son of the Duke of Clarence have been executed, there does not remain ‘a drop of doubtful Royal blood,’ the only Royal blood being the true blood of the King, the Queen, and, above all, of the Prince of Wales. Must forbear from importuning them any more on this subject, as he has written so often concerning the execution of Perkin, and the son of the Duke of Clarence.19
Catherine of Aragon arrived in England the following year to be married to Prince Arthur, the Tudor heir.
Henry VII’s conscience would later trouble him over Edward’s death. According to a letter written by Edward’s nephew, Reginald Pole, in the 1540s, the king had talked to his son about Edward, Earl of Warwick on his deathbed in 1509 – ‘By the grace of God repenting of the acts of injustice committed by him during his reign, and amongst the rest calling to mind one of the most notable done to our uncle the Earl of Warwick’ – and ordered the restoration of his lands and titles to his sister Margaret. The young man’s death was also of concern to the Spanish princess, for whose sake he may have died. Catherine of Aragon was ten years younger than Edward, and just 14 at the time of his execution, which paved the way for her first marriage, to Henry VII’s eldest son Arthur. After her death, Pole wrote that she had come to believe that her misfortunes were an affliction from God for her culpability in the act. Edward was ‘frequently alluded to by herself … that a great part of her troubles emanated from God, not through any fault of her own, but for the salvation of her soul’, as during her marriage negotiations, ‘some disturbances took place … owing to the favour and goodwill borne by the people to … the Earl of Warwick … who being the son of the Duke of Clarence, brother of King Edward, became, by the death of that King’s sons, next heir to the English crown’. At the time of the negotiations, Catherine’s father, Ferdinand of Aragon, had:
made a difficulty about it, saying he would not give her to one who was not secure in his own kingdom and thus, by inciting the King to do what he already desired spontaneously, he was the cause of the death of that innocent Earl, who had no more blame in those commotions, nor could anything else be laid to his charge.
Pole also believed that the premature death of Henry VII’s eldest son, Arthur Tudor, was an act of ‘divine justice’ for the king’s killing of Edward, Earl of Warwick.20
The story of Perkin Warbeck has continued to capture the imagination of writers since his execution, some of the most famous portrayals being Thomas Gainsford’s 1618 The True and Wonderfull History of Perkin Warbeck, John Ford’s 1634 The Chronicle Historie of Perkin Warbeck: The Strange Truth and, in 1827, Mary Shelley’s The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck. Something about the romance and colour of the pretender’s dramatic life has ensured that his story, with its battles and daring escapes, continues to be told. No such works of literature have been inspired by the Earl of Warwick, whose youth spent behind bars and whose uncomplaining conformity and acceptance of his plight did not serve him well in life either. And yet, although Edward’s existence lacked the high and low points of the exciting figure who brought about his downfall, he had something else far more significant in his armoury, which should not be forgotten. Edward, Earl of Warwick was the true King of England. Setting aside the technicalities of the act of attainder against his father, he was next in line to the throne by virtue of seniority after the deaths of his cousins the Princes in the Tower. While the fates of Edward V and his brother Richard are rightly lamented, upon that unfortunate king’s death, probably in the autumn of 1483, the crown should have passed to Warwick as Edward VI. It suited both Richard III and Henry VII to preserve the taint the young man had acquired by association, although both were aware of the danger his continuing existence posed to them and kept him within sight. Richard dealt with him by incorporating him in his extended household, and while Henry initially attempted the same, his long-term solution was incarceration. The Clarence family were only restored to respectability in 1513, when Henry VIII permitted Edward’s sister Margaret to hold the title Countess of Salisbury and returned some of her inherited lands. Blameless as he might have been, Edward, the rightful King of England, was simply too dangerous to be allowed to live. Henry VII had children of his own, and he was determined to ensure that they inherited his throne smoothly and went on to reign over England.