Tudor Queens of England by David Loades Read Free Book Online Page B

The court party swiftly augmented its strength on the council, and the new chancellor was dismissed in favour of the Archbishop of Canterbury. By April the Duke of York and his friends had every reason to fear a regime of partisan revenge and when a Great Council was summoned to Leicester on 21 May, they abruptly withdrew from the court, fearing punitive measures against them. This was tantamount to an act of rebellion, and when the court was on its way to Leicester it was intercepted by York and Warwick with a retinue of some 4,000 armed men. On the court side, Buckingham and Somerset were also ‘well accompanied’ and the result was the fi rst battle of St Albans on 22 May. The courtiers were routed and the Duke of Somerset was killed. Henry was present in person and, after the battle, was honourably conducted to the Abbey, where the Duke of York renewed his homage and fealty. 20 Where Margaret may have been is not apparent but after the battle she retreated to Greenwich. The Duke of York’s supporters justifi ed his action on the grounds that ‘the government, as it was managed by the Queen, the Duke of Somerset and their friends, had been of late a great oppression and injustice to the people …’ but there are no contemporary complaints to

    that effect.21
    It must have seemed that York’s domination of the Council would now be secure, but the situation was not in fact so simple. Despite his undoubted feebleness, the King could not now be ignored, as he had been at the height of his illness. Nor was York in a position to displace those offi cers who had been appointed earlier in the year. Most important of all, the death of the Duke of Somerset had left the leadership of the court party in doubt. There was no favourite of suffi cient status. In theory the King himself was the leader, but in practice it was now his strong-minded spouse. As Sir John Bocking wrote on 9 February 1456: ‘The Queen is a great and strong laboured woman, for she spareth no pain to sue her things to an intent and conclusion to her power …’
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T U D O R Q U E E N S O F E N G L A N D
    Consequently, although the Duke of York was again made protector in November 1455, he soon found himself in the impossible position of being confronted by a political adversary who had unique access to the monarch and who could not be removed by any means short of assassination. He resigned the protectorship on 25 February 1456 and Margaret embarked upon a three-year period of unoffi cial but very real power. As long as Henry was King she would be
    alter rex . Between the summer of 1456 and the summer of 1459 the court spent almost half its time within her power base in the West Midlands. It was at Coventry in October 1456 that Archbishop Bourgchier was dispossessed of the Great Seal in favour of William Waynefl ete and Henry Viscount Bourgchier was replaced as Treasurer by the Earl of Salisbury .22 At the same time Lawrence Booth became Keeper of the Privy Seal. Waynefl ete was the King’s confessor and Booth the Queen’s Chancellor. Although Archbishop Bourgchier was not a party man, his displacement was a partisan move, as were the other appointments. The Great Council duly confi rmed these offi cers, but Margaret’s fi ngerprints are all over this. Members of the Council were expected to show the same deference to her as they did to the King and on formal occasions the King’s sword was borne before her. When the royal couple entered Coventry (again) in September 1457
    Henry was almost invisible behind the pomp that accompanied the Queen. There was no institutional basis and no theoretical justifi cation for such pretensions. Margaret used Edward’s Council as Prince of Wales and her own stake in the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster but for the most part she relied upon sheer will power and strength of character. Although it was the basis of her power, no concept of the consort’s position had ever envisaged such a situation. Only the accepted