Where be my gowns of scarlet
Sanguine, murrey and blues sad and light
Greens also, and the fayre violet
Horse and harnys, fresche and lusty in syghte?
My wykked lyf hath put al this to flighte.1
Towton was a milestone in the history of the Wars of the Roses and appeared to signal the death knell of the Lancastrian dynasty. The young, handsome Edward IV proved very popular and contemporary poets captured the sense that he was restoring the true lineage of Edward III, which had been usurped by Henry Bolingbroke. Edward may have been the son of Cecily Neville, with her maternal Beaufort blood, but his father, the Duke of York, was descended from Gaunt’s elder brother Lionel, Duke of Clarence, albeit through the female line. Edward is cast in the poem ‘Edward, Dei Gratia’ of 1462 as having had been helped to regain the throne of his forebears by divine intervention: ‘God hathe chose thee to be his knight’ because of his heritage ‘out of the stoke that long lay dead’. The contemporary author of ‘A Political Retrospect’ also celebrated the Yorkist victory with anti-Lancastrian rhetoric, accusing them of ‘gret wrongys of oold antiquity, unrightful heirs by wrong alliance usurping this Realm …’ and connecting Edward IV with the reign of Richard II, who was now represented as a paragon:
Kyng Richard the secounde, high of dignytee
Whiche of Ingeland was Rightful enheritoure
In whos tyme ther was habundance with plentee
Of welthe and erthley joye without languor.
The poet dismissed the Lancastrian kings in turn. Henry IV was a leper who had usurped the crown ‘undir the colour of fals perjury’, Henry V had been the best of the line but reigned ‘unrightfully’ and ‘by gret folly, all hath retourned unto huge languor’ under Henry VI. ‘A Political Retrospect’ then went further to explicitly blame Margaret for her husband’s failings, for her rapacious ambition, meaning she ‘ever hath ment to governe all engeland with might and power’ and that her troops, her ‘wicked affinity’, intended to ‘utterly … destroye thys regioun, for with theym is but deth and distruction, robbery and vengeance with all rigour’.
This theme continued in the poem ‘God Amend Wicked Counsel’, written a couple of years later, which had Henry VI lamenting that:
I wedded a wife at my devyse
That was the cause of all my moan
Thyll her intenete seyd I never naye
Therefore I mourn and no thing and merry.
However much the tide had turned against her, Margaret was not prepared to give up the fight. With Henry and Edward, she fled north, from Newcastle to Alnwick Castle and on to Berwick. Margaret’s cousin Louis XI, the new King of France, gave them financial assistance in return for their promise that he would be given Calais once they were restored to power. On 4 April, William Paston wrote to his brother John, describing how Edward had ‘wonne the feld’ and reporting that ‘Kyng Harry, the Qwen, the Prince, Duke of Somerset, Duke of Exeter and Lord Roos be fledde to Scotteland and they be chased and flowed’.2 They headed to the Scottish court, where Mary of Guelders was acting as regent to her 10-year-old son James III. James III was the grandson of Joan Beaufort and James I, and reigned from the death of his father James II in 1460, when a cannon he was loading had exploded at the siege of Roxborough Castle. In return for Scottish support, Henry agreed on 25 April 1461 to grant them Berwick and also offered Carlisle, once it had been recaptured. There was also a treaty of marriage arranged between Prince Edward and James III’s younger sister Margaret.
Cecily of York was the closest thing to a queen in England. While Edward IV lingered in the north, pursuing his enemies and making enquiries into the rebellions that were led against his father, Cecily was appointed as his representative in London. As the king’s mother, she was the most important woman in the land, wielding complete power for a period of weeks, replacing Margaret of Anjou in significance. For the first four years of her son’s reign, Cecily was central to English politics in the subtle female role of advisor and supporter. The papal legate Coppini was urged by his doctor to write and congratulate Edward, ‘not forgetting on any account, to write to the Duchess of York’, because Cecily could ‘rule the king as she please[d]’. It was ironic that the woman who replaced the Lancastrian queen was herself a direct descendant of John of Gaunt, with more Lancastrian blood in her veins than the French Margaret.
Through the remainder of 1461, Margaret made plans to unite all her allies in a joint invasion of England to regain the throne. Among the Yorkists, it was feared with good reason that she would enlist the support of the kings of Portugal and Castile, who were descendants of John of Gaunt and welcomed Margaret as a fellow Lancastrian. Rumours reached Edward IV in London that a joint force of French and Spanish soldiers would land at Sandwich, the Duke of Somerset would join with Margaret’s brother John of Calabria and land with more Spaniards on the east coast, while Jasper Tudor brought an army to North Wales. Sir Thomas Howes wrote to John Paston that he had learned ‘in right secret wyse’ that ‘kyng Herry and the Quene that was, and by the Dewk Somercete and others, of 120,000 men … if wynde and weder hadde servyd theym, shuld a’ben here sone upon Candlemasse … [for] malicious purpose and evyl wylle’.3 The loyal Lancastrian John de Vere, twelfth Earl of Oxford, was to be the focal point in England.4 However, these rumours, suggesting an even larger combined invasion, prompted Edward to pre-empt any attack. By this point, Oxford was in his fifties and had been given an exemption from attending Parliament on account of ill health, although this might have been an excuse to avoid involvement with the new Yorkist regime. Edward had his suspicions though, and in February 1462, Oxford and his eldest son Aubrey were arrested for treason and beheaded on Tower Hill.
Margaret knew her best way to help was to enlist foreign support, which was most likely to come from the land of her birth, by appealing to her cousin Charles VII. On 30 August, Lord Hungerford and Robert Whityngham, her ‘true subjects and liegemen’, wrote to her from Dieppe informing her of Charles’ death the previous month, which removed the potential ally from whom she had hoped to find support. The pair tried to offer the exiled queen comfort and a word of warning, urging her to fear not ‘but be of gode comfort and beware that ye aventure [risk] not your person, ne my Lord the Prynce by the See till ye have oder word from us, in less that your person cannot be sure there as ye ar [and] that extreme necessite dryfe you thens’. They also advised that the king remain safe, knowing that the future of the Lancastrian dynasty rested in the continuing survival of these three people. The letter concludes with the strange detail that Henry was then at Kirkhowbre with four men and a child, while Margaret and Edward were at Edinburgh with Thomas de Roos, a son of Eleanor Beaufort, Duchess of Somerset by her first marriage. Perhaps it was considered safer to keep the king and prince apart in the event of attacks being made upon them. The letter also included a list of all those loyal Lancastrians who had fled with Margaret, many of whom were part of the extended family by marriage: John Ormonde, William Tailboys, Sir John Fortescue, John Audeley, Sir Henry Roos, John Courtenay and others.5
The following April, Margaret travelled to France to meet her father and Louis XI. She left Henry behind in Scotland, but took Prince Edward with her, sailing from Kirkcudbright in a ship financed by Mary of Guelders. She landed on 8 April in Brittany, where Jasper Tudor was attempting to negotiate with Duke Francis to undertake an invasion of England. That summer, Margaret signed an agreement with Louis at Chinon, by which he loaned her 20,000 livres with Calais as security and a hundred-year peace would follow between the two nations. Margaret returned to Scotland that October. During the winter months, the border castles of Bamburgh, Alnwick and Dunstanburgh were recaptured by the Lancastrians, and Margaret began to feel a degree of optimism, promising lands to the Scottish Regency Council in exchange for their support. Then, for some reason, Louis changed his mind and opened negotiations with Edward IV in June. An attack upon Norham Castle led by Henry, Margaret and Prince Edward failed terribly and Margaret was dispirited by the friendship of Philip of Burgundy with the English king. That August she visited Flanders with her son in an attempt to preserve her alliance with the Burgundians, but could not prevent a truce being signed between England, France, Brittany and Burgundy that October. Margaret’s friends had failed her.
Margaret headed back to France with her son. Henry remained behind in England, perhaps to be on hand in the event of a successful invasion; perhaps it was a step too far for the anointed king to leave his country entirely and throw himself upon the mercy of foreigners. Margaret and Edward did not know it at the time, but they would not see him again. Once in France, Margaret established herself at a property owned by her father: Koeur-la-Petite Castle, in Saint-Mihiel-en-Bar, halfway between Verdun and Nancy, and lived on a pension of 2,000 livres.6 Among her retinue were the dukes of Somerset and Exeter, Sir John Fortescue and a number of other loyal Lancastrians served by a staff of around fifty attendants.7 In his De Laudibus Legum Angliae, Fortescue left a description of the young Prince Edward preparing for his military future, dedicating himself:
entirely to martial exercises and seated on fierce and half-tamed steeds urged on by his spurs, he often delighted in attacking and assaulting the young companions attending him, sometimes with a lance, sometimes with a sword, sometimes with other weapons, in a warlike manner and in accordance with the rules of military discipline.
Having observed his mother’s struggles and their loss of status in England, young Edward was following in the footsteps of Henry IV and Henry V, preparing himself to become the next Lancastrian champion.
Another leading Lancastrian was soon to defect to Margaret’s cause. The Yorkists remained wary of members of the Beaufort family, rightly surmising in many cases that shows of loyalty to the new regime did not run very deep. Edward IV sent Edmund Beaufort, son of the Duke of Somerset, to the Tower for two years after Towton. His elder brother Henry had gone to France on Margaret’s behalf to negotiate with the ailing Charles VII for an army to invade England and restore Lancastrian fortunes, but Charles’ successor, Louis XI, was not willing to undertake such a venture, preferring instead to ally himself with Edward IV. He threw Henry Beaufort in prison. The following year, after being allowed to go free and travelling to Bruges, Henry entered negotiations with Warwick and defected to his army at the end of 1462. The following year, Edward IV restored all Beaufort’s lands, ‘made full much of him’8 and invited him to play a role at court, taking part in entertainments and becoming a close companion of the king. Edmund was also freed from prison and his mother Eleanor, Somerset’s widow, was granted a pardon and her estates were restored to her. In July 1463, Henry was on progress with King Edward at Northampton when locals attacked him, forcing him to flee to Chirk Castle. From there, he began to reconsider his allegiance and, at the end of the year, fled to Scotland to join Henry VI.
Through the winter of 1463–64, Margaret continued to try to raise support for her cause and Jasper Tudor visited Paris to negotiate again with Louis XI. In the spring of 1464, Somerset, Exeter, Lord Roos and Lord Hungerford made another attempt to regain control of the throne in Henry’s name, meeting an army led by the Earl of Warwick’s brother, John, Marquess of Montagu, at Hexham. Waiting in France, there was little Margaret could do to influence the outcome. When news came, following the battle on 15 May, it was another terrible blow to her hopes. The Yorkists had won the day. Thirty leading Lancastrian knights were executed after the battle, including Henry Beaufort, aged only 28. Henry VI’s support in England collapsed. He had been hidden by friends in various locations in Scotland and the Midlands but the following year, he was captured by his enemies and sent to the Tower.
Another woman briefly emerges into the Lancastrian story at this point. A woman about whom little has been written as barely anything is known, yet she played a part in the continuance of the bloodline from John of Gaunt, especially after the losses in the Beaufort family and their lack of progeny. When he died, Henry Beaufort left an illegitimate son by a mistress who may have named Joan Hill. Where she came from and who she was remains a mystery, as her name does not appear on any of the court records and was only suggested by a Boston scholar, E.H. Gurney, in 1890. She may have died in childbirth. Henry may have made provision for her, or perhaps Margaret did, because her son received an education that allowed him to take a place at the court of Henry VII and to marry well. Charles Beaufort was legitimised, probably before his first marriage in 1492 to Elizabeth Herbert, daughter of the Lancastrian Earl of Pembroke. She bore him two children before he married again, at least once, and may have fathered three more, establishing the Somerset line with the Beaufort blood. Charles died in 1526 and was buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, but what happened to his elusive mother is unknown. Joan Hill is probably the most shadowy figure in the history of Lancastrian women, making her single contribution of a child, but she was another link in the chain of survival.
Survival was all that the displaced Queen Margaret could think about after Towton. For five frustrating years, she could do little but scheme, hope and bide her time. However, the political climate in England was changing and the previously solid alliance between Edward IV and his cousin the Duke of Warwick was shifting. The primary cause for this was the rise of the Wydeville family. Warwick had been hoping for a French marriage, proposing Bona of Savoy, Louis XI’s sister-in-law, as a bride and queen for Edward, and negotiations took place during 1464. However, when Parliament met at Reading in September, Edward announced that he had already taken a wife, in a secret ceremony earlier that year, probably around 1 May. His bride was none other than Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Jacquetta Wydeville, a beautiful blonde widow five years the king’s senior, formerly married to a Lancastrian knight. Elizabeth was unsuitable as a royal bride on a number of levels, being a widow who had already borne two sons and chosen without consultation with Edward’s family and council, and they married in conditions that gave rise to suspicion. The pair had reputedly met when Elizabeth petitioned him for assistance in retrieving her sons’ inheritance, but they are likely to have been aware of each other for longer, perhaps meeting at court in the 1450s. At the very least, the marriage removed the possibility of Edward making an advantageous foreign alliance. In 1461, Edward stayed near her family home of Stony Stratford and granted a pardon to Elizabeth’s father, Sir Richard Wydeville, for his previous Lancastrian allegiance. The local legend that they met under an oak tree in Whittlewood Forest cannot be substantiated, but it taps into the romance surrounding the match, which may have taken place at the chapel of the Hermitage, on Wydeville’s land. Elizabeth was brought to Reading and formally introduced as queen, and her coronation took place in May 1465. The following February, she bore Edward a first child, a daughter also named Elizabeth.
This marriage was the beginning of the rift between Edward and Warwick, who resented the rapid advancement of the new queen’s relatives, whom he considered to be social upstarts. By some accounts, Cecily was also greatly displeased that her son had chosen not to confide in her and selected an unsuitable woman to replace her as England’s leading lady. In addition, Warwick favoured England’s alliance with France but Edward was increasingly siding with Richard Wydeville, who urged that an Anglo-Burgundian friendship would be more beneficial. By 1469, after Elizabeth had borne three daughters but no male heir, Warwick seized the opportunity to marry his elder daughter Isabel to Edward’s ambitious brother, George, Duke of Clarence. The match had been forbidden by Edward, causing Warwick to seek a dispensation on his own and retreat to Calais, where the ceremony took place on 11 July. George and Warwick then returned to England in the wake of other risings in the north, declaring against Edward in the hope of deposing him in favour of any male child Isabel might bear. Edward was temporarily captured and held by Warwick, but he stopped short of putting the king to death and found that he needed Edward’s presence to rule the country. Licking his wounds, Warwick fled again to France, where he formulated a new plan. The Isabel–Clarence marriage had failed to produce the desired results, when Isabel miscarried a child on board ship. But Warwick had a second daughter. Now he planned to marry Anne Neville to Margaret’s son Prince Edward and restore the Lancastrian dynasty. Margaret’s bitterest enemy now offered to become her salvation.
It was a bitter pill to swallow but Margaret was a pragmatist and a realist. Her husband was still in the Tower, her closest friends and councillors had been killed and her best efforts to enlist support had failed. A powerful figure like Warwick offered her the only chance to strike again at the English throne, so after a show of strength when she kept the earl on his knees for fifteen minutes, Margaret swallowed her pride and embraced the opportunity. She ‘graciously forgave him’ for the ‘injuries and wrongs done to her in the past’ and allowed Warwick to do ‘homage and fealty … swearing to be a faithful and loyal subject of the king, queen and prince as his liege lords unto death’.9 In Angers Cathedral on 25 July, the 16-year-old Prince Edward and the 14-year-old Anne Neville were formally betrothed. Warwick returned to England that September, taking Edward IV by surprise. The king found himself hemmed in by Warwick’s allies and fled to the Netherlands while his family and heavily pregnant wife sought sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. That November, the queen bore a son. Warwick then liberated Henry VI from the Tower but the Lancastrian king was overwhelmed and incomprehensible, and had to be led by the hand through the streets on the day of his formal ‘readeption’ on 3 October. Warwick’s success had been spectacular. This was the moment Margaret had waited for. It was time for her to return to England and step back into her former role. Yet she delayed. The poor weather may have been partly to blame, or else she was waiting until Edward and Anne were formally married that December, but Margaret did not land in England until 14 April. That same day, Warwick was killed in battle.
As Margaret’s ship docked in Weymouth, and she returned in confidence to her subjects, with Prince Edward and Princess Anne as England’s future king and queen, she had no idea of the turn of events that had been played out at Barnet. King Edward had returned from the Netherlands with a vengeance, landing at Ravenspur on 14 March, while Margaret’s boats were still waiting for the storm to abate at Harfleur. From the coast, she travelled to Cerne Abbey in Dorset, a large Benedictine house established before the Norman Conquest, and stayed in the newly built guest house with its oriel windows and flint walls. There, they learned the news that Edward IV had defeated Warwick’s army after a day of fighting in the mist, and that Earl Richard had been killed in the rout. Margaret could have withdrawn at this point. Warwick had been integral to her plans. With Henry recaptured, she and her son had the support of a group of loyal nobles, but they lacked a figure of Warwick’s mettle to stand against the Yorkists. Margaret was still relatively near the coast and had not yet engaged with the enemy. It would have been easy to turn around and return to France. Instead, she decided to stay and face them in battle.
On 4 May 1471, the Lancastrian troops under Prince Edward and the remaining Beaufort brothers, Edmund and John, met with the Yorkists led by Edward IV and his brothers George, Duke of Clarence and Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Margaret waited for news with her daughter-in-law Anne, in or near Gobes Farmhouse, now Gupshill Manor, which was the centre of the Lancastrian defences, about a mile from the centre of Tewkesbury town, near the abbey and rivers Avon and Severn. Margaret had mustered men from Devon and Cornwall and the final total for her army was around 6,000, outnumbering the Yorkists by about 1,000. The right flank was commanded by Edmund Beaufort, the left by John Courtenay, Earl of Devon and the centre was held by Lord Wenlock and Prince Edward, although the anticipated troops from Jasper Tudor had not yet arrived. There was little Margaret could do except pray and plan. Eventually the news arrived. The Lancastrian forces had been defeated, but the exact nature of their end remains unclear. Some sources claim that Prince Edward and Somerset were killed during the battle, while others describe a series of executions taking place in its aftermath, or state that Somerset and others sought sanctuary in the abbey and were dragged out to be killed two days later. Whatever happened, Margaret’s cause was lost. Worse still, her son was dead. She recognised that she could do little now but submit to the Yorkists, sending word to King Edward that she was at his command and submitting to the custody of Sir William Stanley.10
On 11 May, Margaret and Anne were brought before King Edward at Coventry. What happened during the meeting is unclear, but three days later, Anne was committed to the guardianship of her sister Isabel and Margaret began the journey south to London. She was kept as a captive, part of the triumphant king’s train. Some reports describe her being displayed alongside him in a chariot as a trophy of war. Upon their arrival, Margaret was sent to the Tower, where her husband was still lodged, although she was not permitted to see him. That night, 21 May, Henry VI died. According to his biographer R.A. Griffiths, ‘there can be no reasonable doubt that he died violently’.11 When his tomb was opened in 1910, the contents were examined at Cambridge University and the conclusion was drawn that his death had not been caused by grief, as circulated by some contemporary Yorkist accounts. His skull was broken shortly before the time of death, his hair matted with blood. The body of the king was displayed to the public at St Paul’s Cathedral in order to quell any future rumours of his survival and he was buried in Chertsey Abbey. In 1484, his remains would be moved to St George’s Chapel, Windsor. The body of Margaret’s son, who would have been the next Lancastrian ruler, was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey. Two other significant casualties of Tewkesbury were the brothers Edmund and John Beaufort, great-grandsons of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford. Edmund may have been in his early thirties but unmarried and John was only 16. Both died without heirs and, with their deaths, the Beaufort dynasty came to an end.
The events of May 1471 were a triumph for the Yorkists and Edward IV returned to rule, reunited with his wife and family, including his newborn son, Prince Edward. Just a year after this success, though, his queen was to suffer a personal loss on the death of her mother, Jacquetta, Countess Rivers. The former Lancastrian lady, first wife of John, Duke of Bedford, had experienced mixed fortunes in the intervening years. Her second marriage to Richard Wydeville had been a happy one, even though he was of lower status than her birth and first match had given her, and she had borne him fourteen children, the last arriving in around 1458. Due to Jacquetta’s friendship with Margaret of Anjou, to whom she was related, Wydeville had been created Earl Rivers and their loyalty to the Lancastrian dynasty was strong. However, love was to alter all that. Complicit in her daughter’s secret marriage six years later, Jacquetta had witnessed the beautiful Elizabeth’s sudden power and the birth of her grandchildren, but had also suffered the hostility this brought and proved a target for attack on many levels.
As queen, Elizabeth had promoted her relatives, just as did others who rose to power. In March 1466, her father was created Lord High Treasurer and influential marriages were arranged for her siblings, causing resentment among Edward’s former supporters, his brother George and the Earl of Warwick. They took the opportunity to exact revenge when Wydeville fought for the king, his son-in-law, after the battle of Edgecote, capturing the earl and his son John, and executing them at Kenilworth. The bereaved Jacquetta fled to sanctuary with her daughter to wait out the danger but even there, Warwick attempted to discredit them, using the traditional female accusation of witchcraft. The accusation of sorcery is a common thread running through the history of the women of the Lancastrian cause. Coupled with treason, disloyalty, ambition and often sexual irregularity, it blighted the lives of Joan of Navarre and Eleanor Cobham and, after Jacquetta’s death, not even the pious Margaret Beaufort would be safe from the charge.
It would not have escaped Warwick’s attention that Jacquetta had once been Eleanor Cobham’s sister-in-law. Now, twenty years after her lonely death at Beaumaris Castle, Warwick incited one of his servants to make an allegation that Jacquetta had made a leaden effigy of a man, broken in the middle and bound together by wire. This was very similar to the wax image that Eleanor had been supposed to have made in an attempt to harm the young Henry VI. The informant, Thomas Wake, was examined but his evidence relied upon the testimony of a single man, who failed to appear and give account of himself. With Edward IV absent and unable to offer his protection, Jacquetta appealed to the mayor and aldermen, writing them a letter on 31 August, reminding them of the way her intervention had saved the city when it had been threatened by Margaret of Anjou’s army. The mayor forwarded her plea to the next most senior royal in Edward’s absence, George, Duke of Clarence. Soon though, king, Clarence and earl were reconciled and Jacquetta was formally cleared of the charges in Edward’s next Parliament. She may have attended in person to accuse Wake of malice intended to ‘hurt and impair her good name and fame, but also purposing the final destruction of her person’. The accusations were to resurface later when it was expedient for Richard III to cast doubt on his brother’s marriage.
It isn’t clear what Jacquetta died from. She was 56 when she passed away on 30 May 1472, and although the location of her final resting place is unknown, it is likely that she returned to her marital home of Grafton. Elizabeth had only emerged from her fifth confinement, having given birth on 10 April to a daughter, named Margaret, and was probably going through the process of churching around the middle of May. In the last couple of years, she and her mother had been driven together through the uncertainty of the readeption, through birth and death, and seen their fortunes restored. No matter what supernatural powers popular novelists may have ascribed to Jacquetta, she did not have the ability to foresee that the Yorkist dynasty would continue uninterrupted for the next thirteen years, or that there would be a hiatus in 1483. She must have provided considerable support to her daughter and been loath to leave her in uncertain times, just as much as Elizabeth must have grieved her loss.
Just as one queen lost her mother, a former queen and mother was grieving the loss of her child. After Tewkesbury, Margaret of Anjou had nothing left to fight for: she was kept a prisoner in the Tower before being moved to Windsor, Wallingford and Ewelme, where she lived in the custody of Alice, widow of the Duke of Suffolk. Given the long-term friendship between the ex-queen and the Suffolks, this must have been more comfortable for Margaret than remaining in London, in proximity to the new queen, Elizabeth Wydeville. Alice had previously been the custodian of the rebellious Duke of Exeter in 1455, but perhaps the company of her new charge was more to her tastes. With Alice, perhaps Margaret was able to enjoy a little company, gentle pursuits and reminiscences about happier days, recalling when the Duke of Suffolk first accompanied the young princess to England or reading the verses of Alice’s protégé John Lydgate. But Alice died in 1475, at around the age of 70, and it may have been this that prompted Edward IV to reconsider Margaret’s future. A former deposed queen was a dangerous political commodity, even if she had been brought so low as Margaret. In the same year, Edward led an expedition against the French and in the subsequent treaty of Picardy he offered to ransom his prisoner for the sum of 50,000 crowns as long as she renounced all claims to any English jointure, titles or lands. It was a total defeat for the former queen, a complete annihilation which she had little cause or strength to fight. It may even have come as a relief. Margaret was then in her mid-forties and that November she applied for, and was granted, a papal dispensation to eat dairy products during Lent, as she was of a ‘delicate and weak constitution’. Leaving England early the following year, Margaret travelled from Dieppe to Rouen, where she was received by a representative of Louis XI, in a strange, sad reminder of her triumphal entry to the city as a young bride in 1445, when she had been welcomed by King Edward’s parents. Margaret signed away her French inheritances too, ceding to Louis the lands she had gained from her brother’s death the previous year. Her final years were spent in penury in her father’s Castle Reculée but, following his death in 1480, she was dependent upon the charity of one of René’s vassals, who took her into his home at Castle Dampierre. Margaret died there in August 1482 at the age of 52.
Margaret’s reputation has undergone a range of interpretations during the centuries after her death. As a queen, she made many cultural contributions to the Lancastrian dynasty: as a patron, a focus of piety and as an intercessor. Margaret was the founder of Queens’ College, Cambridge, issuing a charter to establish building on 15 April 1448. Her deputy, Lord Wenlock, laid the first stone that very day, which bore the motto ‘The Lord shall be a refuge to our sovereign lady, Queen Margaret, and this stone shall be for a token of the same.’12 Her arms were later removed by Elizabeth Wydeville, who replaced them with her own. Margaret was also the owner of a number of manuscripts, probably including the residue of Gloucester’s library from Greenwich. There was the magnificent collection of texts John Talbot had given her on her wedding day, a manuscript containing Lydgate’s Life of our Lady as well as other lyrics by Lydgate, Chaucer and others, and a Latin life of Gilbert de Semperingham and Georges Chastellain’s Temple de Boccace, probably written in the 1460s. Margaret commissioned a set of Latin prayers to the Virgin, which included an image of herself and her arms impaled with those of Henry and she owned the manuscript made for Mary de Bohun on her marriage to Henry Bolingbroke, to which she had her own arms added.13 She may also have commissioned a manuscript of New Statutes of England for Edward and other similar texts.14
Margaret’s letters show that she took the question of royal patronage seriously, frequently writing to advance her servants. In the late 1440s, she wrote to the Master of St Giles in the Fields to request that the 17-year-old chorister Robert Upholme be received into the hospital and given a livelihood, and to the Duke of Exeter, on behalf of her squire Thomas Sharnbourne, whose cousin had been wrongfully dismissed, later also ensuring Thomas had an annual pension drawn from her estates at Waltham Abbey. Margaret wrote to the Abbess of Barking that she might advance Henry’s secretary Robert Osborne and his wife, to the City of London on behalf of her tenants and to the Archbishop of Canterbury to right a wrong done to John Reignold, yeoman of the King’s Hall. In 1447, two deaths in the royal family prompted her to intervene for the sake of charity. Following the death of the Duke of Gloucester, she wrote to an unknown woman in 1447, perhaps to the wife of the Duke of Suffolk or Somerset, thanking her for the support given to the poet George Ashby and hoping that, despite the duke’s death, she would ‘continue so forth your benevolence and good dispocioun’ towards Ashby. The same April, when Henry, Cardinal Beaufort died, she wrote to executors of his will in the knowledge that a portion of his estate had been bequeathed to the assistance of the needy. Her cause was that of two young people, W. Frutes and Agnes Knoughton, who were ‘poure creatures and of vertuous conversacion’ who wished to be married if they had the benefit of alms.15 Margaret had been a particular friend of the cardinal, staying regularly at his house at Waltham Forest, where a chamber had been fitted out in gold damask solely for her use. The hangings were bequeathed to her in his will of 1447.16
Verdicts on Margaret’s queenship have been mixed and often coloured by issues that have clouded the impressive qualities she possessed and the impossible circumstances in which she found herself. The opinions of many of her contemporaries were dominated by questions of gender, casting her in the role of an unnatural female, a scapegoat for the inability of Henry VI and the failure of his regime, an easy target, as Lisa Hilton notes, of chercher la femme.17 As early as 1462 a pro-Yorkist ballad included the belief that ‘it is a great perversion for a woman of a land to be a regent’, and Margaret’s determination, dedication and bravery have been translated into ambition and an overly militant approach, a charge laid against no man of the period. One part of an anecdotal report of a speech made by Margaret to her army captains cast her in the role of a new Joan of Arc, terror to the English burned as a witch: ‘I have mowed down ranks far more stubborn than theirs are now … I will either conquer or be conquered with you.’ The anonymous author commented that Margaret’s audience ‘marvelled at such boldness in a woman, at a man’s courage in a woman’s breast … they said that the spirit of the Maid who had raised Charles VII to the throne, was renewed in the queen’. The Davies Chronicle had Margaret ruling ‘the realm as she liked, gathering riches innumerable … the queen was defamed and denounced, that he who was called prince was not her son but a bastard conceived in adultery.’
However, it is disappointing that anachronistic readings of Margaret’s abilities in terms of gender appear in later biographies, which portray her as a meddlesome woman, overly ambitious and something of a firebrand or harridan for daring to possess skills for which men of the period are lauded. Some even go so far as to place all the blame at her door. The tone for many of these was set by Victorian historian G.P.R. James, who described her as a woman of ‘great virtues … great talents … and high qualities’ which were tempered by ‘dark and dangerous faults’. She ‘was a woman of ambition and intrigue’ sharing the throne with a weak prince and was directly responsible for his decline and fall: ‘had she joined great virtues to great talents, she might have saved her husband and preserved a crown’. In terms of her marriage, James was also quick to conclude that Henry’s character, which he assessed as better suited to the monastery than the throne, meant that Margaret had ‘at once … gained the ascendancy over his mind’. Again, the gender boundaries were perceived to have been blurred to Margaret’s cost: ‘she was a woman of high spirit, strong sense, ready wit and politic habits, desirous of glory, and covetous of fame.’ All these qualities were acceptable in Gaunt, Henry IV or Henry V, and the wives who supported them, but not in Margaret, because there was no strong man to offset her ambition, and thus making it visible. Yet Margaret’s ‘ambition’ did not emerge until after St Albans, where it is arguably a defensive mechanism to preserve the inheritance of her son, in the light of her husband’s inability to rule. James’ estimation of her failure rested on her gender: ‘she was not inexpert in business and altogether of a masculine turn of mind. In her political actions, she had one great fault however, which has been frequently attributed to her sex; namely a mutability and unsteadiness of purpose.’ In comparison with her husband, Margaret’s purpose, either as queen from 1445–55 or attempting to retain power from 1455–61, or in working tirelessly for her son’s cause in the following decade, suggests a consistency of service and devotion to the Lancastrian cause, which such authors have downplayed as a negative function of her gender. Instead, she did everything she could within the confines of her circumstances, sometimes defying and exceeding such reductive categorisation.
Equally, her biographer Jacob Abbot blames Margaret’s downfall in March 1461 upon a resurgence of national repugnance after the ‘shocking cruelties’ in which she revelled after the battle of Wakefield. There is no evidence to support his claims that she was ‘filled with the wildest exultation and joy’ or that Lord Clifford carried Salisbury’s head to her on a pike, or that she was ‘almost beside herself’. Abbot also cites Edmund, Earl of Rutland as dying in that battle at the age of 12 when, in fact, Cecily’s second surviving son was 17. He also paints a vivid picture of Margaret laughing at York’s head on the spike at Micklegate Bar, with its paper crown, and exulting over Rutland’s death, animated by a ‘ferocious hate’ and ‘furious and vindictive spirit’. Margaret’s unruly army no doubt caused considerable alarm but responsibility for the subsequent Yorkist victories at Mortimer’s Cross and Towton must lie with the skill and determination of Edward IV.
There is no doubt that Margaret was a militant queen defending her family and dynasty, a great fighter for the Lancastrian cause. She may have made mistakes in the handling of her troops, or in the usual accusation that she relied upon factional politics, which created a fatal division with the house of York, but whatever she lacked in political and military astuteness she made up for in determination and devotion. The worst accusation levelled against women of the fifteenth century appears to be that of ambition, a charge from which the reputations of Elizabeth Wydeville and Margaret Beaufort have also suffered. This anachronism is the residue of stricter gender roles and has little place in modern historical analysis. Margaret and her female contemporaries must finally be allowed to exhibit their admirable strengths without such censure. She may not have conformed to the ideals of queenship as set out by her times, but she was one of the bravest and most loyal advocates of the Lancastrian dynasty and it was fortunate to have her.
Margaret’s reputation has also suffered because she was Lancaster’s queen, albeit technically deposed, when the dynasty lost the throne. The family fortunes had been building since the time of John of Gaunt, through the trials of the reign of Richard II, to the brave return of Henry IV and the concerted military efforts of Henry V. Each of their wives had contributed to this process, by childbearing, support, dowries, advice and in a myriad other ways but none had been forced to carry the dynasty, to take on leadership, a substitute kingship, in the way Margaret was. And as a result, because the crown was lost in 1471, Margaret’s reputation has been associated with failure. It is easy with hindsight to make a judgement about the actions or inactions of the past, about the decisions that were successful, or not, and the circumstances they were made in. It would be easy to say that, had Margaret returned to England that spring before the arrival of Edward IV, circumstances may have been different, but ultimately, these historical cul-de-sacs obscure the very real division of responsibility for the dynasty’s failure. Lancaster’s nadir of 1471 was the result of a number of factors, but the most significant was Henry VI’s mental health and unsuitability to rule, coupled with the strength and vigour of the opposition he faced. It would never have been necessary for Margaret’s role to extend beyond that of supportive consort had Henry’s kingship been a success. Ultimately, she was operating within the limits that circumstance dictated and she had been dealt a particularly bad hand. While her nationality and gender counted against her, she was not responsible for the dynastic failure that propelled the throne into Yorkist hands. Rather, she did everything in her power and ability to avoid it.
1 Paston letters.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Griffiths.
5 Paston letters.
6 Hilton.
7 Griffiths.
8 Gregory, Baldwin and Jones.
9 Griffiths.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Strickland.
13 McGerr.
14 Ibid.
15 Strickland.
16 Ibid.
17 Hilton.