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By Root 4127 0

The ancient Use of Sarum had even been adopted as the best order of church services in St Paul’s Cathedral in London now. The present incumbent, Bishop Beauchamp of Salisbury, was a figure of great importance, close to the royal house where other members of his noble family held high office. He was also chaplain to the noble Order of the Garter, and often at Windsor, which lay in his own diocese. Godfrey had taken care to draw himself to Beauchamp’s attention; only months before, he had made a modest donation towards the expenses of the negotiations for Osmund’s canonisation in Rome. When the bishop passed, he bowed politely and always, he noted carefully, the bishop had returned the bow with a smile. They had spoken on several occasions, which gave Eustace the opportunity to explain carefully to the bishop exactly who he was. The fact that Beauchamp, now that he knew, did not greatly care, had never occurred to him.

Once, he had met an even greater figure: for the old connection of his family with the knights of Whiteheath had not been completely forgotten, and on one of his visits to their estate, he was taken into Winchester and introduced to the great Beaufort himself. From this single meeting, when the mighty Bishop of Winchester conversed with him freely, although Beaufort himself had now been dead nearly ten years, he liked to think that he was in touch with the royal Council itself.

That was not all.

“These are dangerous times,” he told Oliver. “We need a foot in both camps.”

The great royal house of York, cousins to the king, had not only raged against the dominance of the Bishop of Winchester and the Lancastrian Council. When the king had gone mad two years before, the Duke of York had been made protector of the kingdom; the king had recovered but since then there had been a constant struggle for power between the two factions, until in May 1455 the dispute broke into an armed conflict at the battle of St Albans. Since the start of the year, the country had been quiet. The energetic queen was once again in control with her Council; York had returned as the King’s Lieutenant to Ireland. But there was still only a weak and half mad king with a single baby son. Who could tell what might happen next?

Of all the magnates on the Yorkist side none were greater than the members of the powerful family of Neville. Their estates were vast and they had acquired them by marriage, intrigue, and by fraud. By marriage with the Montagues they had obtained the earldom of Salisbury and successfully claimed the ancient right to the third penny – a third of all the royal revenues arising in the county. The earl, though seldom seen in Wiltshire, still held huge estates there; his possessions even included the little castle by the harbour at Christchurch, and if the Yorkist party were to take power he would surely become stronger than ever. Even now, though the Lancastrians ruled the Council, the earl and his mighty son Warwick held the fortified town of Calais just across the Channel, which they refused to give up.

“We’re known to the earl,” Eustace told Oliver seriously. His secret hope was always that one day the magnate, who now owned Avonsford, would return his broken estate to him with enough money to put it back in order. He had made several journeys to London during which he had contrived to get himself into the earl’s company and remind him of their common interest in the place. He did not know that the earl’s steward had several times recommended disposing of the unprofitable manor if they could find a buyer, and that this very week it was being offered to the bishop for a sharply reduced price.

While the town did its best to ignore the feudal goings-on, Godfrey longed to take part. Often he would calculate the relative local merits of the nearby Lancastrian estates of the Bishop of Winchester or the Yorkist ones of the earl; or he would consider the value of the friendship of the Bishop of Salisbury with the huge estates of the diocese, who managed to remain on good terms with both parties in the dispute.

So he wove