The Great Turning Points of British History (13 page)

However, there was initially no certainty about the survival of the new dynasty and, since the century ended with a Tudor rather than a Yorkist on the throne, to take 1461 as the key year would be paradoxical. The choice of 1483 answers the objections to both 1485 and 1461. By 1483, the Yorkist dynasty was firmly established and apparently secure and yet in that year the seeds of its destruction two years later were sown. What happened in 1485 was the almost inevitable result of Richard III’s usurpation in 1483.

In 1461, Edward of York defeated the forces of the Lancastrian Henry VI and became Edward IV. He had the support of only a small number of the nobility and almost none of the major nobles, apart from the Nevilles, the greatest of whom was Richard, earl of Warwick, ‘the Kingmaker’. Indeed, it was not until 1471 that Edward could truly count himself king. This was after he had been briefly replaced by Henry VI, in a French-backed rebellion instigated by Warwick, in which Edward’s own brother, the duke of Clarence, participated. Henry VI, his son Edward of Lancaster, and Warwick all died in this rebellion, giving Edward a clean slate.

So effective was Edward’s rule in what is known as his second reign that, by 1483, his ability to impose his will on the country was possibly greater than that of any king since Edward I (died 1307). At its heart were two interlinked forces: a close-knit nobility, among whom his ultra-loyal youngest brother, Richard of Gloucester, the greatest power in the north, was the most prominent; and a powerful household and affinity, led by Lord Hastings, Edward’s oldest and truest political ally. The royal finances and internal order had been restored after the downward spiral of both under Henry VI, and Edward was far too secure for foreign powers to try to intervene in English affairs. Indeed, in his second reign, he was pardoning and restoring some of the exiled Lancastrians and, towards the end of the reign, Henry Tudor, long exiled in France, was considering relinquishing his claim as the heir of Lancaster and returning to England. The succession seemed secure with Edward’s two healthy sons.

Then, on 9 April Edward died unexpectedly, shortly before his forty-first birthday. The age of his heir, Edward V, made it difficult to set up a stable minority government. At 12 he was too young to rule but too close to the age when he might begin to do so. Even so, all would be well as long as the three centres of power could work together. These were the Woodvilles, Edward V’s mother’s family, who controlled the king’s person; Hastings, linchpin of the royal household and political connection; and Gloucester, with his great territorial power. The young king was at Ludlow and, as his Woodville relatives were bringing him to London for his coronation, they were met at Stony Stratford by Richard of Gloucester and his new ally, the duke of Buckingham. There, on 30 April, Edward was forcefully removed from his entourage, and some of the Woodvilles arrested and later executed. Nevertheless, Gloucester continued to work with Hastings, whose control of the royal household gave him enormous power around the king and in the localities, and to prepare for the coronation. But on 13 June Hastings was seized and executed. Gloucester, who had thus removed the opposition first of Edward V’s family and then of the Yorkist political and military establishment, took the throne on 26 June. Richard III, as he now was, justified his usurpation by the need for continuity. However, he had done the hitherto unthinkable: he had deposed a king who had not just done no wrong but had not been in a position to do anything at all, and who had succeeded a successful king.

Richard’s immediate problem was that he was heavily reliant on his closest accomplices, notably Buckingham, and could only keep their support by bribing them with grants. In October Buckingham, having decided Richard was not giving him enough, rebelled. But the core of the rebellion was the Yorkist household. This had originally acquiesced, probably partly taken by surprise and partly in the hope of saving the princes, but, by October, there had been time to resolve to resist Richard and it was probably known by then that the princes were dead.

Rebellion was therefore raised in the name of Henry Tudor and, almost overnight, the man who had given up hope of pursuing his claim to the throne became the Yorkist claimant; to enhance his appeal, he promised to marry Edward IV’s daughter, Elizabeth, if he became king. The rebellion failed and a number of Yorkists left England, followed by others as Richard III’s short reign progressed.

In late 1483, as his support outside the north dwindled, Richard had to embark on a policy of ‘planting’ northern supporters throughout the Midlands and the south, using lands and offices confiscated from Yorkists. These northern interlopers not only earned him a great deal of resentment but also stretched his resources of reliable manpower. In a vicious circle, as Richard’s support diminished, so he became less viable as a king and more people deserted. By the time of Henry Tudor’s invasion and the battle of Bosworth in 1485, this disbelief and disaffection had spread across much of England, even into Richard’s northern stronghold.

Richard might possibly still have won at Bosworth, but Henry was only in a position to defeat him because of what had happened between 1483 and 1485. Moreover, the unease in Richard’s forces, and late betrayal by some of his supposed allies, both of which contributed to his defeat, are also directly attributable to the diminution of belief in his kingship whose roots lay in the way he had taken the throne in 1483. If Bosworth was a Lancastrian victory, it was even more the restoration of the Yorkist establishment.

Why Richard acted can never be known but, since he had shown no previous signs of uncontrollable ambition, it is probable that he was impelled more by panic: seizing the king because he feared that the Woodvilles would take apart his vast estate, much of it built on dubious land transactions, and then, once he had attacked them, fearing a Woodville revanche when Edward came of age.

Perhaps also, having always been the perfect underling to his brother, he found the responsibility of being on his own too much for him. The timing and unexpectedness of Edward IV’s death, the vacuum created by the sudden loss of his wide-ranging and very personal authority, and Richard’s acute failure of judgement, combined to open the way for the first Tudor to become king, something that seemed wildly improbable up to that moment.

And with the Tudors came many things that might not have been otherwise. There was rule that was in many ways no more effective than Edward’s but much more obviously disciplinarian. There were further implications for Britain. Wales, the Tudors’ own country of origin, was already very much integrated and pacified, and Edward IV had increased the pace of this process. But Scotland remained – and was to remain – a troublesome land for England, and it was the marriage of Henry VII’s daughter, Margaret, to the king of Scotland that was to lead to the eventual union of the two crowns under James I. Ireland had been much neglected by late medieval kings, who had France, Scotland and sometimes their own survival more in mind, and Henry VII was to initiate the more aggressive tactics that his successors followed, not necessarily with beneficial results.

Above all, if there had been no Henry VIII, would there have been the break from Rome and everything else that followed?

1450
Crisis over the loss of Normandy
. France had the upper hand in the Hundred Years War in the mid-fifteenth century. The loss of Normandy as an English possession in 1449 caused an acute political crisis. In February 1450 an unruly Parliament impeached Henry VI’s chief minister. Through 1450 there was extended and widespread unrest among the lower classes aimed at the government. This became outright revolt in July, with Cade’s Rebellion, centred on Kent, when the rebels took control of London for several days.

1453
End of the Hundred Years War
. On 17 July the English defeat at the battle of Castillon put an end to centuries-old English rule in Aquitaine and to the last vestiges of English rule in France, apart from Calais and a small enclave around it. This was the effective end of the Hundred Years War. It was hearing the news of this defeat in August that allegedly caused Henry VI to lose his reason for nearly eighteen months.

1455
Beginning of the Wars of the Roses
. The first battle of St Albans on 22 May was the start of the Wars of the Roses. Royal forces confronted the army of the duke of York in what was little more than a skirmish. The Yorkist victory gave the duke control of Henry VI – who, though recovered from madness, was now only a figurehead king – and enabled York to direct government until he lost power to the queen, Margaret of Anjou, in mid-1456.

1461
Accession of Edward IV
. York, having returned from exile to claim the throne in 1460, had been defeated and killed by royalist forces at the battle of Wakefield. His son Edward took up his father’s cause, defeated the Lancastrians at Mortimer’s Cross in Wales, entered London and on 4 March proclaimed himself king, making good his claim by a great victory on 29 March over the Lancastrians at Towton in Yorkshire.

1470
Brief return of Henry VI
. Warwick and Clarence (Edward IV’s own brother), having fled to France after an abortive rebellion, and there made peace with Margaret of Anjou and her son, Prince Edward, returned, restoring Henry VI to the throne in October. Edward IV escaped but returned in March 1471, reclaiming his throne. Warwick was killed at Barnet in April, and invading Lancastrian forces were defeated at Tewkesbury in May and Prince Edward was killed. Edward IV ordered Henry VI’s murder.

1478
Death of Clarence
. Clarence had deserted Warwick on Edward’s return from exile and had been pardoned but remained troublesome. In 1471–4 he quarrelled with Gloucester over the Warwick inheritance. He was a destabilizing influence in the regions where he was most powerful and there were rumours of treason. In 1478 he was condemned in Parliament and subsequently killed in the Tower, allegedly drowned in a butt of malmsey. His destruction indicates Edward’s dominance and ruthlessness at this time.

1482
Recovery of Berwick
. This key frontier town had been surrendered to the Scots in early 1461 in the last throes of Henry VI’s rule. Anglo-Scottish relations were largely peaceable under Edward IV, once Scotland gave up supporting Lancastrians in exile. However, in 1482, encouraged by a disaffected Scottish noble, the duke of Albany, an expedition to Scotland was launched under Gloucester. It achieved little, but did retake Berwick.

1485
Battle of Bosworth
. With French subvention and the support of Yorkist exiles, Henry Tudor landed at Milford Haven in Wales in August. He travelled through the midlands, gathering support. Richard III’s forces, mustered at Nottingham, met Henry’s at Market Bosworth near Leicester on 22 August. Some of Richard’s greatest noble supporters failed to fight for him. Launching a brave, or foolhardy, attack on Henry’s centre, Richard was killed, leaving the victorious Henry to claim the throne.

1495
Poynings’ Law
. Support in Ireland for the Yorkist pretender, Perkin Warbeck, and feuding among the Irish lords led Henry VII to intensify his rule there. In 1494 he sent a close servant, Sir Edward Poynings, to restore order and allegiance. A number of acts concerning the government of Ireland were passed in the Irish Parliament of 1494–5, including ‘Poynings’ Law’, which severely curtailed the independence of the Irish Parliament from interference by the English king and council.

Few events in England have rippled out to create a tsunami affecting the whole of the British Isles as much as those of 1534. In this year Henry VIII, who had divorced Katherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn, completed his break with the pope by getting Parliament to acknowledge him as Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England. This meant that Henry had the right to appoint the bishops, vet the articles of faith and impose his will on the monasteries, all of which he did. To enforce his new powers, Henry revised and extended the treason law. Anyone disputing the royal supremacy, even by words alone, would be put on trial. To winkle out opposition, he set a test: an oath of supremacy and allegiance to the king and the ‘imperial crown’, to be taken by those holding offices in Church and State, sitting in Parliament, or who were in religious orders until he dissolved them.

Historians like to debate whether Henry ushered in a reign of terror, but this misses the bigger picture. The effects were not just confined to England. To justify his actions, Henry announced a new theory of kingship based on biblical and classical prototypes, giving an extra layer of meaning to the phrase the ‘imperial crown’. In a nutshell, he claimed imperium (empire) with expansionist territorial overtones. When the duke of Norfolk discussed this with a bemused Spanish ambassador, he cited the precedent of King Arthur, ‘emperor of Britain, Gaul, Germany and Thrace’. The ambassador could barely keep a straight face, saying it was a pity that Arthur hadn’t also been ‘emperor of Asia’.

Soon no one was laughing. In 1534, Henry began a radical overhaul of provincial government. Implemented in its initial stages by Thomas Cromwell, its focus was Wales, Ireland, the northern borderlands, and finally Scotland. All but Scotland were Tudor dominions, although more in name than in fact. The crown’s writ ran unevenly north of the river Trent and was ignored in Wales and Gaelic Ireland: the people who really mattered in the outlying regions were the territorial magnates.

Scotland was, of course, an independent kingdom ruled by the Stewart king, James V, except that he was Henry VIII’s nephew. This encouraged Henry to believe in Scotland’s dynastic dependency, awakening dreams of Anglo-Scottish union. Earlier in his reign, Henry had revived Edward I’s claim to be ‘superior’ and ‘overlord’ of Scotland. In and after 1534, he believed that Wales, Ireland and (increasingly) Scotland were ‘within the orb of the “imperial crown” of England’.