The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry by Christopher Wilkins Read Free Book Online Page A

estates in France.
    Sir Richard moved fast and married the young Duchess before anyone thought to stop them, although she was later fined 1,000 marks (about £666) for failing to procure royal consent.6 The 15-year-old King Henry VI was understanding and pardoned them after six months, but Jacquetta’s smart relations in Burgundy were horrified at the misalliance. It mattered little to them that Sir Richard was regarded as the handsomest man in England, or that he was an accomplished knight and a brave captain who made a career fighting the French and whose special interest was taking part in tournaments.7 However, it was as an able military commander that he was recognized in England and raised to the peerage in 1448 as Baron Rivers,8 ‘for his valour, integrity and great services’ in the French wars. He was later elevated to the Order of the Garter and appointed to the Privy Council.
    At the time, England was sinking into chaos. King Henry was mentally unstable (inherited through his mother from King Charles VI of France) and many people regarded his powerful Queen, Margaret, as a frightful woman from Anjou, particularly after 1457 when one of her French friends amused himself by burning Sandwich.9 English possessions in France had fallen like ninepins and there was no general of Bedford’s standing or calibre to stop the collapse. The French had recently discovered how to use cannon against castles and the brothers Bureau established a great train of artillery with which they blasted the English out of their castles in Normandy and Guienne.
    The 63-year-old Talbot10 tried to re-establish English supremacy but was killed at the battle of Castillon in 1453. He had 2,500 men and decided to attack a French army of 10,000 that was dug into a defensive position with cannon. Bordeaux fell to the French soon after (as Constantinople was falling to the Turks). The hard men in the front line were fighting a losing, unpaid war while covetous noblemen and sycophants ruled at court.
    Debts were mounting, administration was falling apart and there was no money in the Treasury. There was an imaginative offer to use alchemy to make money, which William Hatclyf, the King’s secretary, was appointed ‘to investigate touching the means proposed to the king, whereby within a few years, his debts may be paid in good money of gold and silver’. Unfortunately it came to nothing and the country plunged further into debt.11
    In one of the King’s mad spells Richard, Duke of York, whose blood claim to the throne was arguably stronger than Henry’s, had been appointed Protector (1454) and then, while suspicion, sedition and skirmishing engaged the great men of the land, Richard thought he would take advantage of the King’s madness. He tried to usurp the throne and so triggered the ‘Wars of the Roses’, or ‘the Cousins’ War’ as it was then known.
    Edward Woodville was born some time around then and the Cousins’ War was to last intermittently for his lifetime. His father, Sir Richard, now Lord Rivers, was one of those summoned to the Great Council of 1458 which attempted a reconciliation between the rival factions. It proved impossible. A campaign ensued,12 which culminated in the Duke of York withdrawing to Ireland with his son, Edward, Earl of March, who then moved on to Calais, where their cousin and ally, the Earl of Warwick, controlled its garrison of around 2,000 men.
    For the King, Lord Rivers was sent to assemble an expeditionary force at Sandwich, and his 18-year-old son, Anthony, Edward’s eldest brother, went with him. However, the Yorkist Earls, March and Warwick, took the initiative and on the night of 15 January 1460 sent a raiding party across the Channel. The Woodvilles, both father and son, were surprised in their beds and carried off to Calais as prisoners.
    The Earl of Warwick clearly had a sense of theatre, for the Woodvilles were brought at night ‘before the Lords with eight score torches’ and bitterly