It seemed that Henry VI had prevailed but then, as has always happened in the history of England, an arbitrary and unforeseen circumstance turned the course of events. In the summer of 1453 the king fell into a stupor or, in the phrase of the period, his wit and reason were withdrawn. The origin of this malady is uncertain, and may lie in the series of humiliations and misfortunes that had beset the king since the beginning of his reign. But there was one precipitate and immediate cause. The last battle of the Hundred Years War had just been lost by the English. The citizens of Bordeaux had asked to be returned to English sovereignty, and an army was duly sent to assist them under the command of the earl of Shrewsbury; in the subsequent battle the English were routed and Shrewsbury, trapped beneath his fallen horse which had been killed by a cannon ball, was despatched with a hand-axe. This was also the battle in which the region of Gascony was finally surrendered to the French.
So Henry declined into a state of catatonic silence and despondency that was to endure for the next eighteen months. He could not walk or even rise from a chair without help; he had no awareness of time, and lost the power of speech. A child was born to him and Margaret of Anjou, in the autumn of this year, but even the arrival of a son and heir did not enliven him. The duke of Buckingham brought the infant to the king at Windsor Palace and, according to a contemporary,
presented him to the king in goodly wise, beseeching the king to bless him; and the king gave no manner answer. Nevertheless the duke abode still with the prince by the king, and when he could no manner answer have, the queen came in and took the prince in her arms and presented him in like form as the duke had done, desiring that he should bless it; but all their labour was in vain, for they departed thence without any answer or countenance, saving only that once he looked on the prince and cast down his eyes again, without any more.
If he could have known or guessed the fate of the young prince of Wales, he would have had reason for his sorrow. Two months later the senior members of the council came to him, but ‘they could get no answer nor sign’.
In the absence of effective leadership the king’s council were obliged to turn to York; he was no longer heir apparent, according to the parliament house, but he was the senior nobleman in the kingdom. York had forgotten and forgiven nothing; he returned to London in the full heat of his anger. His great enemy, Somerset, was consigned to the Tower on the charge of betraying English possessions in France. York also declared that Somerset as well as the king and queen had effectively tried to isolate and to silence him. Margaret of Anjou had always opposed York, but her antipathy became all the more marked when it seemed possible that York might try to supplant her young son. Here were the seeds of the subsequent bloodshed. She turned York into an enemy by regarding him as one. She presented a Bill in which she was to be granted the power to govern the country and appoint the great officers of state but, in March 1454, York was declared to be Protector of the kingdom.
Five doctors had been appointed to watch over the ailing king. It was believed that the dung of doves, applied to the soles of the feet, induced healing sleep. Milk was very good for melancholy. But the eating of hazelnuts discomforted the brain. Green ginger, on the other hand, quickened the memory. Awareness returned to Henry slowly and by degrees. It was reported that ‘the king is well amended, and has been so since Christmas day … On Monday afternoon the queen came to him and brought the lord prince with her; then he asked what the prince’s name was, and the queen told him Edward; then he held up his hands and thanked God thereof. And he said he never knew him till that time, nor knew what was being said to him, nor knew where he had been whilst he was sick … He said that he was now in charity with all the world …’
It is not clear that he ever fully recovered from his affliction; the reports of his behaviour in succeeding years suggest that to some extent he had become feeble-minded. Yet the protectorate of York had now come to an end. He gave his resignation to the king at the palace in Greenwich; Somerset was duly released from the Tower and returned to the side of the monarch. Henry now also welcomed back to his councils the perceived enemies of York; he was behaving like the leader of a faction rather than as the ruler of the country. Naturally enough York deemed himself to be under threat. He felt obliged to make a preliminary strike but, in the process, he began the conflict that came to be known as the Wars of the Roses.
32
Meet the family
In the absence of her husband Margaret Paston decided to attack those who had turned her out of the manor house at Gresham; the violent affair was mentioned in the previous chapter. She called on her husband to send handguns, crossbows, longbows and poll-axes; her servants wore body armour. In the same letter she asked for a pound (450 grammes) of almonds, a pound of sugar and some cloth to make gowns for the children. The ordinary life of the world continued even in the face of extreme violence. Or it could be claimed that violence was as ordinary, and as unremarkable, as almonds and sugar.
It is sometimes surmised that in the fifteenth century the expression of emotion is different from that of our own time. But where, if anywhere, does that difference lie? A delicacy of emphasis, not generally found in the register of contemporary speech, can perhaps be found in the Paston letters. Of the Paston servants we learn that ‘they are sad [serious] and well advised men, saving one of them who is bald, called William Penny, who is as good a man as goes upon the earth, saving he will be a little, as I understand, a little cupshotten [drunk]; but he is no brawler, but full of courtesy …’ Immense shrewdness is also evident. ‘John Osborne flattered me,’ John Paston wrote, ‘because he would have borrowed money from me. In retailing of wood there it will be hard to trust him. He is needy.’ Again, in another letter, we learn that one man ‘had but few words but I felt by him he was right evil disposed to the parson and you; but covered language he had’.
In many respects it was a hard world, filled with threat. ‘I pray you beware how you walk if he be there, for he is full cursed-hearted and lumish.’ The meaning of ‘lumish’ is uncertain; it is a word that has gone forever. One husband believed that his wife’s child was not his. ‘I heard say that he said, if she comes in his presence to make her excuse, that he should cut off her nose to make her be known what she is, and if her child comes in his presence he said he would kill it.’ That may of course have been an idle threat. A tendency to extravagance is found in the period. Of the earl of Arran, John Paston writes that ‘he is the most courteous, gentlest, wisest, kindest, most companionable, freest, largest and most bounteous knight’.
Humour and irony are also to be found. When one son of Paston contracted a cold in damp Norwich he wrote that ‘I was never so well armed for the war as I have now armed myself for the cold.’ Resignation was a familiar theme. ‘If it thus continue I am not all undone, nor none of us; and if otherwise then & …’ Which is as much to say – well if we are undone, then so be it. There were striking phrases such as ‘I know you have a great heart’ and, sarcastically, ‘this is a marvellous disposed country’. ‘And so I am with the jailor, with a shackle on my heel.’ ‘This is a right queasy world.’ Of an indiscreet man it was said that ‘he is not secure in the bite’. Flattering an enemy was sometimes necessary because ‘a man must some time set a candle before the Devil’. ‘Towards me’ is written as ‘to me-wards’.