No doubt Lady Darcy was the practical expert on the Yorkist nursery. But many others in Winchester for Arthur’s christening were well informed as well. Elizabeth Woodville, the queen dowager, had been instrumental in setting it up. Elizabeth of York had been on the receiving end as a conscientious eldest daughter. But most interesting is the role of John Alcock, bishop of Worcester, who had just christened Arthur ‘in pontificals’ or full priestly vestments.13
Alcock belonged to the other elite of late medieval England. Aristocrats and gentlemen, like Oxford, supplied the brawn and (occasionally) the beauty and style in public life; the brains and organization came from university-educated clergymen like Alcock.
Their origins were from almost the opposite end of the social spectrum to Oxford: they owed their position to talent and education, not pedigree and breeding, and they wielded their authority by the pen, not the sword. But, despite its very different sources, their power was commensurate with that of the titled aristocracy. They had a virtual monopoly on the two greatest offices in the council, the positions of lord chancellor and lord privy seal; they even had comparable incomes, since the richest bishoprics, like Canterbury and Winchester, which enjoyed princely revenues, were generally reserved for them.
The greatest, the richest, the most splendid of such clerical ministers was to be Henry’s own cardinal-chancellor, Thomas Wolsey, who did more, built more and impressed himself more vividly on his contemporaries than any of his predecessors.
But he was also the last – and in part for reasons that were already present in the kind of sophisticated, Latinate education which was even now being planned for Henry’s elder brother, and was in time to be enjoyed by Henry himself.
Alcock was thus part of an Indian summer. Born in about 1430, he was the son of a burgess of Hull. He received his early education at the grammar school attached to Beverley Minster, and then continued to Cambridge, where he stuck through the whole programme of degrees, from bachelor to doctor. By then he was about twenty-nine. The result, however, was anything but otherworldly. Hardly any of Alcock’s contemporaries opted for theology; instead, like him, they chose law.
The result was honed, organized, hungry minds.
But Alcock had to wait over ten years for the first crumbs of patronage. Then it fell like manna from heaven. The turning point was the crucial year 1470–71, when Alcock, then an up-and-coming lawyer, seems to have been one of the select group who showed kindness to Elizabeth Woodville and her children when they took refuge in the Westminster sanctuary. Neither Edward IV nor Elizabeth Woodville ever forgot it. In quick succession Alcock became dean of St Stephen’s, Westminster, master of the rolls or deputy chancellor, and bishop of Rochester.
This was the prelude to the decision in 1473 to give Alcock joint custody of Edward, prince of Wales and the presidency of his council at Ludlow. His co-adjutor was Elizabeth Woodville’s brother, Anthony, Earl Rivers. Rivers had ‘the guiding of our son’s person’, Alcock the responsibility for managing his household as well as presiding over his council. He had also probably had a major hand in drafting the ‘ordinances’ which laid out their joint roles.14
Understandably, in view of his closeness to the Woodvilles and Edward V, Alcock was marginalized by Richard III. But Henry VII restored him to full favour. He was acting lord chancellor at the beginning of the reign and, as a notable preacher (one sermon to the University of Cambridge lasted more than two hours), he became the principal propagandist for the new regime in the pulpit.
Now he, the former guardian of the Yorkist prince of Wales, had been chosen to name and baptize the new Tudor prince. Probably he still had records of the upbringing of Prince Edward; if not, as a seasoned administrator, he knew where to find them.
Alcock’s knowledge clearly informed Henry VII’s decisions about the rearing of his own son. But Alcock’s episcopal colleague, Peter Courtenay, bishop of Exeter, who had just confirmed Arthur in the second half of the ceremonies in the cathedral, also had an important part to play in how the new prince would be brought up.15
Courtenay’s career was a bolder, bigger version of Alcock’s. He was a cut above socially, as a member of the cadet line of the earls of Devon. He had also studied abroad, at Cologne and Padua, the latter then the most famous law school in Europe. There he became rector, and put the finances of the faculty on a sound footing. In the 1460s he had been Edward IV’s proctor or legal agent at the papal court; in the 1470s he acted as Edward’s own secretary.
Then, in 1483 he took the most important decision of his career. He joined in the risings against Richard III, and after their failure fled to join Henry Tudor in Brittany. With his position, talents and combination of top-level administrative and political experience, he immediately became one of Henry Tudor’s most influential advisers. He was with him at Bosworth, when he was described (rather strangely for a bishop) as ‘the flower of knighthood of his country’. A fortnight later he was made lord privy seal, alongside Alcock as chancellor. And he supported the new king’s right hand throughout the coronation service.16
Now, in Winchester, he was about to get his reward.
Or rather, he was about to get Winchester. William Waynflete, the scholar-bishop who had held the see for almost forty years, had died at his palace at Bishop’s Waltham, five miles to the south-east of Winchester, on 11 August, only three weeks before the arrival of the court in the city. Winchester was the plum of the English church, with an income of £4,000 a year – almost three times that of the Earl of Oxford, who for all the antiquity of his title had only £1,400 a year. And it had buildings to match. There was a splendid town palace, Winchester House, in Southwark on the south bank of the Thames opposite St Paul’s, and three grand country residences, apart from Bishop’s Waltham, at Farnham, Wolvesey and Esher.
The formalities of Courtenay’s ‘translation’ to Winchester, as it was known, were not completed till April 1487. But the king had probably taken the decision to appoint him on the spot. Part of the deal seems to have been that Courtenay should make Farnham Castle available as a nursery residence for Arthur.
It was ideally suited to the purpose. It was on the way back to London; it was near, but not too near, the city; it had extensive parkland; and it had recently been extended and beautified by Waynflete, who was a great builder.
The king and queen left Winchester in the third week of October, and arrived at Farnham on the twenty-sixth. Arthur, with his nurse Catherine Gibbs and his little household headed by his lady mistress, Lady Darcy, was settled into his new home, and the court continued to Greenwich to celebrate the great feasts of All Saints and Christmas. His mother visited him in January 1487 to make sure that all was well. And in February the townsmen of Farnham successfully petitioned for permission to set up a chantry or endowed chapel with a priest to pray for the king and queen and Arthur himself, who was ‘now being nursed’ in the town. The same month the king assigned 1,000 marks (£666.13s.4d) for the expenses of the household of his ‘most dear son the prince’.17 It was the kind of solitary upbringing that befitted the heir. And it was one that Henry would never experience.
But even before the final details of Arthur’s household were in place, the political settlement which had been dramatized by his christening had crumbled. One of his godparents had been the great