Meanwhile, the day before the battle, Queen Margaret had landed at Weymouth. For the moment, the true Lancastrians were almost glad when they heard that they were rid of their new Yorkist ally. The Queen’s generals intended to march through Wales, there make a junction with Jasper Tudor, who was collecting forces, and thence move to their strongholds in the North. Edward divined their plan, and pushed rapidly across England, to secure if possible Gloucester and the valley of the Severn. The armies encountered at Tewkesbury, where the Queen had taken a strong position among the abbey buildings and the neighbouring enclosures. Again the superior skill of Edward secured the victory to his much inferior forces. The few remaining Lancastrian nobles, the Prince of Wales, Devonshire, Lord John Beaufort, and others, fell upon the field. The Duke of Somerset, the fourth and last of the Beauforts, was executed after it. Margaret and some others were taken prisoners.
Edward’s triumphant return. Murder of Henry VI.
There was one other danger, and then the Lancastrian party seemed destroyed for ever. The Bastard of Falconbridge suddenly appeared with a considerable fleet before London. The gallant defence of the citizens, and the arrival of assistance from the King, thwarted this last effort, and Edward returned in triumph, having proved the stability of the house of York. His arrival was immediately followed by the secret murder of King Henry, one of those dark deeds which has been attributed without much ground to Edward’s brother, Richard of Gloucester. A bloody court of justice held in Canterbury, for the punishment of the Kentish men, closed this revolution of eleven weeks. On the subsequent death of Holland, Earl of Exeter, whose body was found upon the sea in the Straits of Dover, there were but two important members of the Lancastrian party left. These were Oxford, and Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, who made good their escape to Brittany, whence Jasper’s nephew subsequently returned to England in that expedition which terminated in Bosworth field. The clergy and the lesser nobles, seeing further contest useless, made their peace with the reigning house, and received pardons, and after Parliament had re-established the Yorkist dynasty, the wars of the Roses seemed to be at an end, and England at peace.
Clarence’s quarrel with Richard. 1476.
With Edward. 1477.
His trial.
His death. 1478.
But the house of York was now to feel that ineradicable evil which beset the Plantagenets. The princes of the family could not agree. Clarence had already occupied the position of chief of the opposition. He had already joined in the struggle between the old and new nobility as the partisan of the former party. Richard, a man of far greater ability, and of a reflective turn of mind, was in his heart inclined in the same direction. For the present, however, he saw his advantage in remaining the true and very efficient assistant of his brother Edward, by whom he had been intrusted with the government of the North. Clarence, incapable of being a great party leader, showed his disposition in lesser matters, and quarrelled with both his brothers. He had himself married Warwick’s eldest daughter, Isabella, and was anxious to appropriate all the great Warwick possessions. When Richard, therefore, determined upon marrying Anne, the younger sister, he hid the young lady, who is said to have been discovered by her lover in the dress of a servant-maid, and when he was unable to prevent the marriage, refused to divide the inheritance. A fierce quarrel was the consequence, and it required the intervention of Parliament to secure an equitable division of the property. Thus embroiled with one brother, the Duke of Clarence speedily fell out with the other. On the death of his wife in 1476, he turned his thoughts to a second marriage with Mary of Burgundy, who became, on the death of Charles the Bold at Nancy in 1477, the heiress of his vast dominions. Edward prevented the marriage. In the first place, he would have much disliked to see his brother, on whom he had not the smallest reliance, powerful in Burgundy, and again, the Queen, and the Queen’s party of the new nobility, were anxious that Mary should be married to the Earl of Rivers. The breach between the brothers was complete, and Edward, who never knew pity, only watched for an opportunity to rid himself of Clarence. The occasion chosen was trivial enough, but very characteristic of that age. A gentleman of Clarence’s household, called Burdett, had uttered some angry words against the King. He was shortly after tried for necromancy, and as in the course of the inquiry it appeared that, among other acts of magic, he had cast the King’s horoscope, he was condemned to death. With this verdict Clarence violently interfered. Edward was now able to charge him with interfering with the course of justice. He was impeached and tried before the House of Lords. The King in person was his accuser, and after a hot personal quarrel, in which the King charged him with all sorts of ungrateful acts of treason, he was condemned to death in 1478. A petition of the Commons, always at the command of Edward, removed the King’s last scruple, and Clarence disappeared privately at the Tower, drowned it is said in a butt of Malmsey wine.
Edward joins Burgundy against France. 1475.
Failure of his expedition.