Elizabeth WOODVILLE

Between 1464 and 1483, the Woodvilles, the family of EDWARD IV’s queen, comprised the most favored and resented political grouping in England. Jealousy over their rapid rise to power at the Yorkist COURT, coupled with hatred caused by their greed, ambition, and arrogance, made the Woodvilles a disruptive political influence that was partially responsible for the USURPATION OF 1483 and the eventual fall of the house of YORK.

 

The Woodvilles’ social rise was based on two spectacular mésalliances. The first, in 1436, was the secret marriage of Richard WOODVILLE, a Northamptonshire gentleman, to JACQUETTA OF LUXEMBOURG, the widowed duchess of Bedford and a descendent of European nobility. The second, in 1464, was the secret marriage of their eldest daughter, Elizabeth WOODVILLE, to Edward IV. Prior to 1461, Woodville, then Lord Rivers, had been a Lancastrian; he and his eldest son Anthony WOODVILLE, Lord Scales, had fought for HENRY VI at the Battle of TOWTON, while Elizabeth’s first husband, Sir John Grey of Groby, died fighting for the house of LANCASTER at the Battle of ST.ALBANS in 1461. After Towton, Rivers submitted, and by 1463 he was a member of Edward IV’s COUNCIL. However, the family’s political and social advancement became unprecedented in speed and scope after the king’s marriage to Elizabeth.

 

Other than her beauty, the new queen brought her husband no political advantages and a host of problems, not the least of which was providing for her large family, which, besides her parents, included five brothers, seven sisters, and two sons by Grey. Between 1464 and 1466, Edward and the queen obtained numerous highborn spouses for unmarried Woodvilles. Several of these marriages angered Richard NEVILLE, earl of Warwick, the king’s chief advisor. For instance, in 1464, Margaret Woodville married Warwick’s nephew, the son of the earl of Arundel. In 1465, the court was shocked by the marriage of twenty-year-old John Woodville to Warwick’s kinswoman, Katherine Neville, the sixty-five-year-old dowager duchess of Norfolk. The marriages of Anne Woodville to the son of Henry BOURCHIER, earl of Essex; of Eleanor Woodville to the son of Edmund GREY, earl of Kent; and of Katherine Woodville to Henry STAFFORD, duke of Buckingham, deprived Warwick’s daughters, Isabel and Anne NEVILLE, of prospective husbands. The marriage of the queen’s son, Thomas GREY, to the daughter of Henry HOLLAND, duke of Exeter, claimed the bride who had been promised to the son of Warwick’s brother, John NEVILLE, Lord Montagu. Nor was Warwick happy with the marriage of Mary Woodville to the son of William HERBERT, the earl’s rival for lands and influence in WALES.

 

Although Warwick ascribed his declining influence with the king to the Woodvilles, most of the English nobility accepted the family and sought to exploit their favor at court. Nonetheless, the Woodvilles were highly unpopular. With the exception of Scales, who became head of the family as Earl Rivers after Warwick executed his father in 1469, contemporary observers characterized the Woodvilles as greedy, ambitious, overbearing, and a malign influence on the king. For instance, in 1468, the family’s ill-treatment of Sir Thomas COOK was said to have cost that LONDON merchant his fortune and turned him into a convinced Lancastrian, and in the 1480s, the Grey brothers and Edward Woodville were condemned for encouraging the king’s drinking and womanizing. Although Warwick’s desertion of the house of York in 1470 was a result of the king’s independence and the earl’s ambition,Warwick’s hatred for the Woodvilles was a contributing factor. In the 1470s, Woodville influence seemed even more sinister as it increased while the competition disappeared— the NEVILLE FAMILY was destroyed in 1471; the king’s one brother, George PLANTAGENET, duke of Clarence, was executed in 1478; and his other brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester, withdrew from court to govern the north.

 

At Edward IV’s death in 1483, the reign of EDWARD V seemed likely to open with a Woodville-dominated regency, a prospect that frightened many noblemen, including Gloucester and William HASTINGS, Lord Hastings, a close friend of the late king and a rival of both Rivers and of the queen’s son, Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset. As governor of the prince after 1473, Rivers controlled the person of the new king and exercised great power in Wales, where he could quickly recruit large numbers of men. In London, the queen and Dorset controlled the TOWER OF LONDON, the royal treasure, and the young king’s brother, Richard PLANTAGENET, duke of York, while Sir Edward Woodville controlled the fleet. Gloucester probably had good cause to fear for his future in a Woodville-dominated government. By playing on the family’s unpopularity, Gloucester was able to mask his own ambitions and to convince men like Hastings to support his initial moves to control the regency. Unable to generate much support from other nobles, the Woodville influence was in ruins by the end of 1483. Rivers and Sir Richard Grey were executed, Dorset and Bishop Lionel WOODVILLE were in exile, the queen was in SANCTUARY, and Gloucester was king as Richard III. The usurpation of Edward V’s throne and the subsequent disappearance and probable murder of the young king and his brother were in some part made possible by the actions and unpopularity of the Woodville family.

 

Further Reading: Hicks, Michael, “The Changing Role of the Wydevilles in Yorkist Politics to 1483,” in Charles Ross, ed., Patronage, Pedigree and Power in Later Medieval England (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Alan Sutton, 1979), pp. 60–86; MacGibbon, David, Elizabeth Woodville: Her Life and Times (London: A. Barker, 1938); Ross, Charles, Edward IV (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).

By making EDWARD IV the ally of dissident Scottish noblemen, the 1462 Treaty of Westminster- Ardtornish sought to compel the Scottish government to abandon its support for the house of LANCASTER.

 

After their defeat at the Battle of TOWTON in March 1461, HENRY VI, Queen MARGARET OF ANJOU, and their chief noble supporters fled into SCOTLAND, where they were given protection by Queen MARY OF GUELDRES, who led the Scottish government as regent for her nine-year-old son, JAMES III. Allowed to use Scotland as a base for raids into England, the Lancastrians kept the northern counties in turmoil. To force the Scots to abandon his opponents, Edward IV allied himself with the Scottish king’s opponents. By the Treaty of Westminster-Ardtornish, John, the semi-independent Lord of the Isles, severed his links to the Scottish Crown and declared his allegiance to Edward IV. In return, Edward agreed to pay the Lord of the Isles a pension and to grant him northern Scotland, most of which was already under his influence, when the country was conquered by the English. The rest of Scotland was pledged to the treaty’s other signatory, James Douglas, ninth earl of Douglas, a Scottish rebel who had been resident in England as a pensioner of the Crown since 1455.

 

No attempt was made to put the treaty into effect, for the agreement was probably meant only to highlight the Scottish Crown’s vulnerability in northern Scotland and to convince the Scottish government to come to terms with Edward IV and expel the Lancastrian exiles. A truce was concluded in 1463, and Scotland thereafter ceased to be a safe haven for Lancastrian adventures. However, Edward IV remembered the ploy and resumed negotiations with the Lord of the Isles in 1479 when he was again at odds with the Scottish king.

 

Further Reading: Mackie, J.D., A History of Scotland, 2d ed. (New York: Dorset Press, 1985); Ross, Charles, Edward IV (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).

Having acquired a reputation for courage and skill in the French wars, Sir Andrew Trollope was perhaps the most famous professional soldier in England at the start of the WARS OF THE ROSES.

 

Although Jean de Waurin claimed Trollope was of lower class origins, little is known of his early life. Trollope fought with distinction in Normandy in the 1440s, returning to England in 1450 after the surrender of Falaise. By 1453, he was in CALAIS, holding an appointment as sergeant-porter of the garrison. When Richard NEVILLE, earl of Warwick, who had been captain of Calais since 1456, brought part of the garrison to England to support Richard PLANTAGENET, duke of York, in 1459,Trollope came with him.

 

On the night of 12 October 1459 at the Battle of LUDFORD BRIDGE, Trollope accepted HENRY VI’s offer of pardon and switched sides, bringing the Calais garrison with him into the Lancastrian camp. Because Trollope was privy to all York’s plans, the duke’s position became untenable, and the Yorkist leaders fled the field during the night. In November, Trollope accompanied Henry BEAUFORT, duke of Somerset, to Calais, where the duke tried unsuccessfully to wrest the town from Warwick. After receiving news of Warwick’s capture of Henry VI at the Battle of NORTHAMPTON in July 1460, Somerset and Trollope surrendered their stronghold at Guisnes and withdrew into FRANCE. Trollope was in northern England by December, when he and Somerset led the Lancastrian force that defeated and killed York at the Battle of WAKEFIELD.

 

Trollope was also one of the leaders of the unruly Lancastrian force that surged south from Wakefield to defeat Warwick at the Battle of ST. ALBANS on 17 February 1461 (see MARCH ON LONDON). After the battle, which reunited Henry VI with his family, the king knighted his son Prince EDWARD OF LANCASTER, who in turn knighted Trollope. Sir Andrew supposedly joked that he did not deserve the honor, having killed only fifteen men due to a foot injury inflicted by a caltrop (i.e., a pointed, metal, anticavalry device). After the Battle of St. Albans, Trollope withdrew with the Lancastrian army into Yorkshire, where he died six weeks later at the Battle of TOWTON.

 

Further Reading: Boardman, Andrew W., The Battle of Towton (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1996); Haigh, Philip A., The Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1995).

The Battle of Hedgeley Moor, fought in Northumberland on 25 April 1464, checked the growth of Lancastrian insurgency in the far north and allowed the continuation of peace talks between SCOTLAND, a former Lancastrian refuge, and the Yorkist government of EDWARD IV.

 

Early in 1464, Henry BEAUFORT, the Lancastrian duke of Somerset, whom Edward IV had pardoned in the previous year, left his post in WALES and fled into the Lancastrian north, where he declared openly for HENRY VI. After a failed attempt to seize the Yorkist supply base at Newcastle, Somerset appeared at the Northumbrian castle of BAMBURGH, then in Lancastrian hands. Joining forces with Sir Ralph Percy and other recently pardoned Lancastrians, Somerset launched a two-month campaign that by late March had turned northeastern England into a Lancastrian enclave. With Norham Castle and the towns of Bywell, Hexham, Langley, and Prudhoe all in Somerset’s hands, the Anglo-Scottish talks that were set to resume in Newcastle on 6 March had to be rescheduled for late April in York. To safely escort the Scottish commissioners from the border to York, Edward IV dispatched John NEVILLE, Lord Montagu, into Northumbria.

 

Collecting strength as he moved north, Montagu evaded a Lancastrian ambush and came safely to Newcastle. Resuming his march to the Scottish border, Montagu encountered a force under Somerset about nine miles northwest of ALNWICK on Hedgeley Moor. Although accounts of the battle are sketchy, fighting seems to have begun with the usual exchange of ARCHER fire. But before the two armies could engage, the left wing of Somerset’s force suddenly broke and ran, perhaps because of poor morale. Montagu shifted his position to attack the remaining Lancastrians, who were quickly overwhelmed by the larger Yorkist army. At some point during the fighting, Somerset and most of the Lancastrian army disengaged and scattered, leaving Sir Ralph Percy and his household RETAINERS on the field to be slaughtered. After the battle, Montagu reformed his army and continued his march to the border, where he met the Scottish envoys and conducted them safely to York to resume their talks with Edward IV’s commissioners.

 

Further Reading: Haigh, Philip A., The Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1995).

HENRY VI’s inability to function as an effective monarch, which became total in 1453 with the onset of chronic mental illness, was a main cause of the WARS OF THE ROSES.

 

In early August 1453, while staying at the royal hunting lodge at Clarendon, Henry fell suddenly into a stupor that rendered him unable to communicate. Because we have no eyewitness accounts of the start of Henry’s illness, the exact cause and nature of his ailment remain mysterious. One contemporary chronicler claimed that it commenced when the king suffered a sudden shock, a suggestion that has led modern historians to speculate that Henry fell ill when he received the devastating news of the destruction in July of an English army at the Battle of CASTILLON, a defeat that ended the English presence in FRANCE. Although rumors that the king was childish or simple had been whispered about the kingdom before 1453, Henry showed no signs of mental illness until that date. However, he may have inherited a genetic predisposition to such illness from his maternal grandfather, Charles VI of France, who suffered recurring bouts of violent madness.

 

In March 1454, a deputation from PARLIAMENT visited the king at Windsor. Instructed to ascertain Henry’s wishes as to the filling of several important offices that had fallen vacant in recent months, the deputation could get no response from Henry, who seemed unaware of their presence. He could not stand or walk and required round-the-clock care from his grooms and chamber servants. He displayed none of the frenzy that had characterized his grandfather’s illness but neither recognized nor understood anyone or anything. When he finally recovered around Christmas 1454, Henry remembered nothing of the previous seventeen months, including the birth of his son, Prince EDWARD OF LANCASTER. Henry was again unwell after the Battle of ST. ALBANS in May 1455, when the unaccustomed shock of combat may have triggered another episode.

 

From 1456, the few surviving accounts of Henry’s condition show him as weak-minded, requiring inordinate amounts of sleep, and given almost entirely to a routine of religious devotions. After 1457, the king found seclusion attractive, and his wife, Queen MARGARET OF ANJOU, often housed him in monasteries, away from any but loyal courtiers. Although the king had periods of lucid activity, such as his personal direction of the LOVE-DAY peace effort in 1458, he was largely a cipher during the last fifteen years of his life; the political factions that coalesced around the queen and Richard PLANTAGENET, duke of York, fought to control his person and thereby his government. Because his illness rendered him unable to function as an arbiter of noble disputes, and because the queen’s partisanship made him the figurehead for one political faction, Henry’s mental incapacity was instrumental in overthrowing royal authority and bringing about the dynastic war between the houses of LANCASTER and YORK.

 

Further Reading: Griffiths, Ralph A., The Reign of King Henry VI (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Wolffe, Bertram, Henry VI (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981).

A staunch adherent of the house of LANCASTER, William Beaumont, Lord Beaumont, continued to resist Yorkist rule even after the destruction of the Lancastrian male line in 1471.

 

After his father John Beaumont, Lord Beaumont, died fighting for HENRY VI at the Battle of NORTHAMPTON in July 1460, William Beaumont was courted by the Yorkist regime and allowed to take possession of his family estates. However, he maintained his father’s Lancastrian allegiance and in March 1461 fought against EDWARD IV at the Battle of TOWTON, where he was taken prisoner. In November, when Edward’s first PARLIAMENT included Beaumont in a bill of ATTAINDER, the king pardoned him, but granted the Beaumont estates to William HASTINGS, Lord Hastings, and to John NEVILLE, Lord Montagu, both loyal Yorkists. Beaumont did not regain his lands until November 1470, when they were restored to him by the READEPTION government of Henry VI, whose leader, the former Yorkist Richard NEVILLE, earl of Warwick, was desirous of winning the support of all former Lancastrians.

 

Beaumont fought with Warwick at the Battle of BARNET in April 1471, escaping after that defeat into SCOTLAND with John de VERE, earl of Oxford. Although the death of Prince EDWARD OF LANCASTER at the Battle of TEWKESBURY on 4 May 1471 and the murder of his father, Henry VI, in the TOWER OF LONDON (see HENRY VI, MURDER OF) some weeks later seemed to end forever all hopes of a Lancastrian restoration, Beaumont and Oxford remained implacably hostile to the house of YORK.

 

In September 1473, they seized the small fortress on the island of St. Michael’s Mount off the Cornish coast. Unable to do any real damage, Beaumont and Oxford were nonetheless sore irritants to a Yorkist government seeking to finally secure its hold on power. After a lengthy siege, the two lords surrendered in February 1474, and Beaumont remained in prison until after the fall of the house of York in 1485, when the new king, HENRYVII of the house of TUDOR, released him and restored him to his lands and titles.

 

In 1487, Beaumont suffered a mental breakdown that rendered him incapable of caring for himself and his property. Custody of Beaumont’s estates was transferred to Oxford, who, in 1495, also received custody of Beaumont’s person. Beaumont spent the rest of his life as Oxford’s guest, dying at the earl’s house in Essex in December 1507.

Further Reading: Gillingham, John, The Wars of the Roses (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981); Ross, Charles, Edward IV (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).

Sanctuary was a right of the English Church whereby cathedrals, abbeys, churches, and churchyards could serve as places of refuge for criminals, debtors, victims of abuse, and political refugees.

 

In theory, a person claiming sanctuary could remain unmolested in the sanctuary precincts for forty days, after which time the person had to either stand trial for his offense or confess and swear to abjure (i.e., leave) the realm. If the latter, the offender was escorted from sanctuary to the nearest port by a local constable. If no ship was immediately available, the person had to daily wade into the sea up to his knees and cry out for passage until a vessel could be found to transport him. During the Middle Ages, certain English liberties (i.e., jurisdictions exempt from royal authority) and certain sanctuaries possessing papal or royal charters were accepted as permanent places of refuge. Although the right of sanctuary was found throughout Christian Europe, it was nowhere so widely used or so highly formalized as in England.

 

During the WARS OF THE ROSES, the concept of sanctuary for political offenders and political refugees was both widely applied and widely violated. Queen Elizabeth WOODVILLE fled twice into sanctuary at Westminster. From October 1470 to April 1471, during the READEPTION of HENRY VI, the queen remained unmolested at the abbey, even giving birth there to her son, the future EDWARD V. Elizabeth’s second period in sanctuary, from May 1483 to March 1484, was occasioned by the death of her husband, EDWARD IV, and the ensuing political coup of her brother-in-law, Richard, duke of Gloucester, who seized custody of Edward V to prevent the establishment of a government dominated by the WOODVILLE FAMILY. In June 1483, Gloucester either pressured or compelled Elizabeth to send her son Richard PLANTAGENET, duke of York, out of sanctuary and into the duke’s custody. The queen herself remained at Westminster until finally coaxed from sanctuary by a promise of support for her daughters, who had shared her confinement.

 

Several times during the wars, victors on the battlefield violated sanctuary to seize and execute losers. Edward IV had Edmund BEAUFORT, duke of Somerset, and other Lancastrian survivors of the Battle of TEWKESBURY forcibly removed from Tewkesbury Abbey. Two days after the battle, Somerset and most of his sanctuary companions were condemned and then beheaded in Tewkesbury marketplace. In April 1486, Francis LOVELL, Lord Lovell, and the brothers Sir Thomas and Sir Humphrey Stafford, adherents of RICHARD III who had been in sanctuary since the Battle of BOSWORTH FIELD in the previous August, emerged from their refuge to incite rebellion against HENRY VII. When the Staffords returned to sanctuary in May after the rebellion collapsed, Henry ordered them seized and brought out for trial, an action that resulted in the condemnation of both and the execution of Sir Humphrey. The Stafford case led to the first legal limitations on the right of sanctuary; after much debate, the Stafford judges ruled that sanctuary did not apply in cases of treason or for second offenses.

 

Further Reading: Gillingham, John, The Wars of the Roses (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981); Goodman, Anthony, The Wars of the Roses (New York: Dorset Press, 1981); Kendall, Paul Murray, The Yorkist Age (New York: W.W. Norton, 1962); Ross, Charles, The Wars of the Roses (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987).