Henry: Virtuous Prince. David Starkey

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 Lancastrian stalwart, the earl of Oxford; the other was the principal survivor of the Yorkist political establishment, the queen dowager Elizabeth Woodville. This was the union of the red rose with the white as it was intended to be.

      It lasted for less than six months.

      On 2 February 1487, Henry celebrated the feast of the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, colloquially known as Candlemas because of the lavish deployment of candles in the ritual, at his favourite palace of Sheen. Candlemas was one of the ‘days of estate’ or unusual ceremony at court. Large numbers of nobles were in attendance on such occasions, and now Henry took advantage of the fact to call a ‘great council’. A ‘great council’ was, in effect, a parliament without the commons, and this one had more impact, both on the country and on Henry’s family, than most parliaments.

      The background was a sudden escalation of Yorkist opposition. This had never entirely died away, but now it took on disturbing echoes of Henry Tudor’s own successful campaign for the throne. An impostor appeared in Ireland, and was successfully passed off as a Yorkist prince. Survivors of Richard III’s regime offered support in England, and the Duchess Margaret in the Netherlands gave refuge and help to Yorkist exiles, just as Brittany had done to Lancastrian émigrés a few years earlier.

      The great council agreed a series of counter measures. Most dramatic was the decision to strip Elizabeth Woodville of her recently regranted dower lands. These were given instead to her daughter the queen, while Elizabeth Woodville herself withdrew from court to live in retirement at St Saviour’s Abbey, Bermondsey, on a comfortable pension.

      Did Henry VII really fear that Elizabeth Woodville might join in the developing Yorkist conspiracy? That she was on the point of turning against her own daughter and grandson, to whom she had just stood as sponsor at his christening? It seems hard to believe. On the other hand, he may have simply decided it was better to be safe than sorry.

      Whatever the case, the effect was the same. With Elizabeth Woodville’s retirement, followed by her death in 1492, Lady Margaret Beaufort emerged as the unchallenged matriarch of her son’s court. Henry would have only one grandmother. Bearing in mind Lady Margaret’s imperious character, he was probably grateful.

      * * *

      The great council had another important result: it flushed out John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln. Lincoln was the son and heir of the duke of Suffolk; he was also, through his mother Elizabeth Plantagenet, the nephew of both Edward IV and Richard III. He was especially close to the latter, who may have nominated him as his heir. Despite this, Lincoln had accommodated himself to the new Tudor world. He presented his aunt, Queen Elizabeth Woodville, with the towel after her ceremonial washing at Arthur’s christening, and a few months later he was one of the ornaments of the court at the celebration of All Saints’ Day at Greenwich.

      He had attended the great council too. But the Yorkist revival had tested his allegiance too far. Immediately after the council, he absconded from court and fled to join the other Yorkist émigrés in the Netherlands.

      It was the beginning of a deadly feud between the Tudors and the de la Poles that only ended thirty years later. Part of the trouble was that the de СКАЧАТЬ