For Elizabeth of York, the handover of her little brother Richard was probably even more distressing than Gloucester’s previous detention of Edward V. As the eldest son, Edward had been escorted by his parents at the age of only three to Ludlow Castle in the Marches of Wales, there to be put through a rigorous programme of literary, political and religious education to fit him for the throne. He was given his own household and council, and formal ‘ordinances’ or regulations were issued which spelled out the arrangements for his upbringing in minute detail.
Thereafter, brother and sister met only on the rare occasions that Edward came to court.
Richard, in contrast, had been part of Elizabeth of York’s life from the moment of his birth in August 1473. As the second son, he had remained at home with his mother and his sisters. And he had been the liveliest and most attractive of brothers. Years later, a foreign visitor recalled seeing the family together, with Richard at its heart: ‘He was, the visitor remembered, a very noble little boy and that he had seen him singing with his mother and one of his sisters and that he sang very well. He was also, the visitor added, very pretty and the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.’9
Now he too was swallowed up in the Tower.
* * *
While Elizabeth as sister mourned, the queen mother as dynast plotted revenge. She found a willing fellow-plotter in Henry Tudor’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. Despite her Lancastrian blood, Lady Margaret had quickly accommodated herself to the realities of power in Yorkist England. Indeed, following her third marriage to Thomas, Lord Stanley, Edward IV’s lord steward, she became a leading light in it.
But with Richard’s usurpation and the disappearance of the princes in the Tower, it was clear that the tide had turned. Lady Margaret was not one to be left behind. Using the Welsh physician and necromancer Dr Lewis Caerleon as intermediary, agreement was quickly reached. Margaret Beaufort’s son Henry Tudor would be betrothed to Elizabeth Woodville’s eldest daughter Elizabeth of York; a joint rising would overthrow Richard III and Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York, now king and queen, would inaugurate a new unified regime in which York and Lancaster would sink their ancient differences.
The marriage of Henry’s parents now seemed a serious possibility.
It proved easier said than done. Richard was a competent and energetic general, and saw off with ease the series of badly coordinated regional revolts which was all the confederacy could throw against him. If Henry Tudor had joined them, as had been planned, he would most likely have been captured or killed. And even if he had escaped, his cause would have been damned by personal failure.
But, once again, his luck held. Or rather, a catalogue of mishaps turned out to be for the best. He did not set sail till things were almost over; when he arrived off England, he found the coast occupied by troops loyal to Richard III and decided not to land; finally, storms blew him back to the French coast and – as it turned out – to safety and the opportunity to fight again another day.
There was even a grain of comfort in the defeat of the English risings. Some four hundred of the participants escaped and fled abroad to join Henry Tudor back in Brittany. Almost all the leaders were men of substance: there were Woodville relations, veterans of Edward IV’s household and important figures in the local government of the south-eastern shires. Augmented with recruits of this number and calibre, Henry Tudor’s following started to look like a half-plausible government in exile.
Things were put on a formal footing during Christmas 1483, when the exiles held a quasi-parliament at Rennes, the Breton capital, and exchanged oaths: Henry swore to marry Elizabeth of York; his followers, old and new, took an oath of allegiance to Henry Tudor as king of England.
But the strange course of Henry Tudor’s fortunes had some way yet to run. Only three months after the meeting at Rennes, his cause suffered a heavy blow. Elizabeth Woodville – tired of the limbo of sanctuary and setting aside whatever moral scruples she felt (they were probably not many) – came to an agreement with Richard III. Still worse, at Christmas 1484 she introduced her daughter and Henry Tudor’s proposed bride, Elizabeth of York, to Richard III’s court, where both her beauty and the king’s treatment of her made a sensation. There were even rumours, which Richard III had to deny publicly, that he intended marry her after the divorce or death of his queen.
Was Henry’s mother a pawn in the hands of others? Revolted at the thought of a marriage of convenience to her brothers’ likely murderer? Or did she simply see a marriage – whether to Richard III or to Henry Tudor – that would make her queen consort as the only hope of rescuing the shipwreck of her family’s fortunes? All are possibilities.
And where Elizabeth Woodville led, her son by her first marriage, Thomas, marquess of Dorset, tried to follow. After the failure of the revolts of 1483, he, like the other rebel leaders, had fled to join Henry Tudor in Brittany. Now he tried to slink across to England to reconcile himself with Richard III. But he was caught and hauled back to Henry Tudor in disgrace. After this double perfidy, Henry Tudor never fully trusted the Woodvilles again.
Meanwhile, Richard III was making serious attempts to extract Henry Tudor from Brittany. His chosen instrument was Duke Francis II’s low-born minister, Pierre Landais, whom he won over by backing him against his aristocratic opponents. By autumn 1484 the minister was ready to deliver his side of the bargain by handing over Henry Tudor to a certain death. But Richard III’s proved a Pyrrhic victory. Henry Tudor was warned of what was in store and fled across the border to France. Then, characteristically, Duke Francis changed tack and allowed the other English exiles to follow him.
The flight to France was the making of Henry Tudor. Brittany did not have the resources to back a serious invasion of England; France did. And, as Henry Tudor’s luck would have it, circumstances there meant that he was received with open arms.
Louis XI had died in 1483, leaving as his successor his only son, Charles VIII, who was aged thirteen. This resulted in a minority, which as usual provoked a struggle over who should enjoy the regency. The losing side in the struggle then sought an alliance with Richard III. This, on the prin-ciple of tit-for-tat, was enough to turn the new French government into enthusiastic supporters of Henry Tudor.
The French court went to Normandy. There, with Henry Tudor present alongside the French king, the provincial estates voted taxation to finance his conquest of England. Men and ships followed. On 1 August 1485 the little armada set sail from Honfleur for Milford Haven.
England, Henry Tudor hoped, would be taken through Wales; it would also have to be conquered by French troops, since Englishmen made up less than a fifth of his army of two or three thousand. This too was lucky, for French infantry tactics were considerably ahead of English.
Henry Tudor came face to face with Richard III’s army at Bosworth in Leicestershire. Richard’s army was much bigger. But, inhibited by a justifiable fear of treachery, the king’s leadership had been uncharacteristically confused and indecisive. The night before the battle he was also troubled by dreadful dreams, and slept badly. As 22 August dawned, however, Richard III recovered himself: it was, he realized, all or nothing.
Twice Richard III launched his forces against Henry Tudor’s little army. In the first attack, the king’s vanguard broke against Henry Tudor’s front line which, stiffened by his seasoned French pikemen, had assumed a dense, wedge-shaped formation.
Richard III’s army was now on the back foot. But the king thought he saw a way to retrieve the situation. He caught sight of Henry Tudor with only a small detachment of troops and at some distance from the rest of his army. The chance was too good to miss, and Richard III decided to try to end the battle at a single stroke by felling his opponent in combat, man-to-man.
There followed the second assault, led by Richard III himself.
For the last time in England, a king in full armour and wearing his battle crown and surcoat of the royal arms charged at the head of his heavily-armed