‘Oyez, oyez, oyez!’ cried the heralds in early October 1494 as they issued the challenge to two days of martial sport: the first day to be a joust, in which the opposing knights charged at each other with wooden lances; the second a tournament, in which they fought, also on horseback, with heavy swords. A third day’s sport was soon added, making the tournament the most ambitious to be held in England since the palmy days of Edward IV’s reign. The heralds’ cry went up in three several places: in the king’s great chamber at the ancient royal palace of Woodstock, to the north of Oxford, where the court was then staying; at the fair in the town; and again in the city of London.
But the cry was also intended to echo round Europe, and ‘all comers of what nation so ever they be, as well [Henry VII’s] subjects as other’ were challenged to respond. For the joust was to celebrate the forthcoming creation of the real duke of York, as opposed to the mere pretender of Malines.4
Henry, the second son had acquired a dynastic purpose at last.
The background was the disputed inheritance of Richard of Shrewsbury, second son of Edward IV. Before Richard, the usual title of the king’s second son was not York but Clarence. The title of duke of Clarence had first been given by Edward III to his second son Lionel in 1362. It had been revived for Henry IV’s second son Thomas in 1411, and again for Edward IV’s next brother, George, in 1461.5
But with the birth of Richard of Shrewsbury the tradition was broken. George, duke of Clarence was still alive and had a son, the earl of Warwick, who could be expected to inherit the dukedom. Edward IV, who was the son, great-nephew and great-grandson of successive dukes of York, and had briefly borne the title himself before his accession, was also anxious to preserve the family ‘name’. The result was the decision to create Richard of Shrewsbury duke of York at the age of only eight months.
The ceremony took place on 28 May 1474, the day after parliament had been prorogued for Whitsuntide, and was followed by a splendid joust. A year later, the boy was made, in quick succession, knight of the Bath and knight of the Garter. In 1478, following his child-marriage to the heiress of the Mowbrays, he was given the great and ancient office of earl marshal, which his wife’s family had held in hereditary succession. Finally, in 1479, he followed in the footsteps of his namesake and grandfather Richard, duke of York, and was made lord lieutenant of Ireland.6
The reasons for following the single precedent of 1474 and creating Henry duke of York, rather than the many and making him duke of Clarence, can be summed up in one word: Warbeck. But perhaps there were more positive motives at work as well. For, as the success of Warbeck’s impersonation showed, loyalties to the house of York were still alive and well. Why not make a fresh attempt to incorporate them within the house of Tudor? And who better to do it than Henry? He was close to his mother, Elizabeth of York; he took after his Yorkist grandfather, Edward IV; even his principal residence, Eltham, was one of Edward IV’s favourite palaces. At least it was worth a try – after all, in the face of the threat posed by Warbeck, almost anything was.
Warbeck is also why Henry VII decided to do more than simply slip Henry into Richard of Shrewsbury’s shoes. Richard of Shrewsbury’s accumulation of titles, offices and honours was impressive. But it had also been random and piecemeal. Henry VII would go one better: his second son would be inducted into his inheritance in a single, coherent programme of ceremony. There is evidence as well of unusually thorough preparation. Who was responsible for the detail we do not know. But there is no doubt that the inspiration came directly from the king. He kept a watchful eye throughout, and when anything threatened to go wrong, intervened swiftly and decisively himself.
He had to. For he was not only seeking to outdo the Yorkist court, he was also competing directly with the Burgundian. In the last half-century or so, the Burgundian court had reinvented court ceremony and chivalric display as political weapons. Now, with the Burgundian support for Warbeck, these weapons had been turned against Henry VII. Time after time in the summer of 1494, as Maximilian had given Warbeck an honoured place at an entrée or an oath-taking ceremony, he had increased Warbeck’s standing in the eyes of Europe and diminished Henry Tudor’s.
It was now time to strike back, and Henry’s creation as duke of York provided the means.
The decision had been taken in the late summer. At that point the royal household split into two: part remained with the king at Woodstock; part joined Henry at Eltham.7 This sort of division frequently happened under Henry VII. The king could not, of course, be in more than one place at a time. But his household could be. And that was the next best thing. For the household did more than look after the king’s domestic arrangements and royal ceremony. It was also a sort of ministry of all the talents, and the department of everything else. This meant that it was fast, responsive and able to tackle the king’s principal concern of the moment – whatever and wherever it might be.
And in the autumn of 1494, that meant Henry’s creation as duke of York.
The household with the king at Woodstock was in overall charge. It was there, for instance, that ‘letters missives’ and ‘writs’ were directed to those who had been chosen ‘to give their attendance upon our dearest second son the Lord Henry for to take with and under him the noble order of knight of the Bath’. On 2 October the writs were forwarded in a batch to Robert Lytton, the under-treasurer of the exchequer and himself one of those nominated, together with a covering letter under the ‘signet’, the smallest and most personal of the royal seals. This instructed Lytton to ‘send [the writs] forth in the haste ye goodly may’ to the addressees. But first he was to keep a formal record of the writs ‘for our interest in case any of them do default in that behalf’.8
The king’s ‘interest’ lay in the fines that would be due from any of those nominated who refused to take up the order of knighthood at the king’s command. At first, this sounds like a typical piece of money-grubbing by the notoriously tight-fisted Henry VII. But, most likely, his intention was to secure not the largest amount in fines, but the best possible turnout for his son. And he succeeded: twenty-two of those chosen answered the summons; the remainder ‘were pardoned or at their fines’. The number and quality of the knights attracted attention, as was also intended, and Sir John Paston’s London agent sent him a full list, headed by ‘My Lord Harry, duke of York’.9
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There is no such documentation for the activities of the household at Eltham. But it seems clear that it had two principal tasks. The first was to turn Eltham from a staging-post for the royal nursery into the seat of a new royal dukedom. The second was to prepare Henry himself for his forthcoming creation. And there was plenty to do. After all, it was little more than a year since he had been weaned. Now he had to ride, to walk, to bow, and to stand still; to memorize and repeat a strange oath; to wear robes, coronet and sword; and, most difficult of all perhaps, to remain awake through days of interminable ceremony.
And he had to be confident enough to do all this in public, under the relentless scrutiny of thousands of pairs of eyes. Henry’s every move would be watched by the city chroniclers, the recording heralds, the man in the street and – no one quite knew where or who or how many – Warbeck’s adherents.
The ceremonies had been timed to coincide with the great feast of All Saints on 1 November. This was one of the four crown-wearing days at court, when royal ceremony was at its most splendid and the court at its fullest. It would be all the fuller for Henry.
On 10 October, Henry’s father, mother and grandmother left Woodstock and began a slow and stately return to the capital. They took a week, with halts of a day or two at Notley Abbey near Thame, High Wycombe and Windsor. On the seventeenth, they reached Henry VII’s favourite residence at Sheen. Here they stayed for another ten days before leaving by boat early in the morning of the twenty-seventh, arriving at Westminster in time for dinner.
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