The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [113]
No portrait or effigy survives to show us what Warwick looked like, nor do the contemporary sources contain any descriptions of his appearance. He appears in the Rous Roll in full armour, but bears a marked resemblance to all the other armoured males in the work: Rous made no attempt at portraiture, even though he knew and admired Warwick.
By 1453, ‘there was none in England of the half possessions that he had’. Warwick owned land in eighteen counties and more than a score of magnificent castles, his main seat being at Warwick Castle, a massive fortress that had been rebuilt by the Beauchamps with a splendid new tower. The Earl also held hundreds of manors, and his territorial influence stretched from Cornwall to the mighty lordship of Castle Barnard in Yorkshire, while the greatest concentration of his lands lay in the west Midlands and south Wales. From these properties Warwick drew a huge income, and could also call upon formidable reserves of fighting men if need be. Indeed, his possessions were so extensive that he was regarded as of greater political importance than his own father, Salisbury, and was thought to be richer even than York. The splendour and extravagance of his household was already renowned, while his huge army of retainers and men of his affinity displayed on their livery of bright scarlet surcoats his personal badge of a white, muzzled bear and a ragged staff, a device inherited from the earls of Warwick.
This was the man who now became York’s principal ally.
The great council assembled, and York, whose supporters had expressed doubts about the Prince’s paternity, now argued that the Queen’s child could not be recognised as the heir to England unless he was first acknowledged by the King and then presented by him to the nobility as his heir, according to ancient custom. A delegation of twelve lords, spiritual and temporal, therefore took the prince to visit his father at Windsor in the hope that the sight of the child would arouse Henry from his stupor. But although they made several attempts to make him acknowledge and bless the baby, he remained impervious to what was going on around him, appearing ‘uncurious and unconscious’.
The council was faced with a problem. Until the King had acknowledged his son, Parliament could not pass legislation confirming the child’s right to the royal succession or make provision for him as heir. This situation only served to fuel the rumours that flourished during the winter of 1453–4, that the prince was a bastard, that he was not the King’s son, and possibly not even the Queen’s. It was alleged that he was either a changeling, smuggled into the Queen’s bed after her own child had died, or the result of an affair between Margaret and Somerset. This was all too believable, given Henry VI’s vaunted views on marital sex and the fact that the Queen had not conceived once during the first seven years of her marriage. The rumours were also given credibility by the fact that the people were not aware of the King’s condition, and placed their own interpretation on why he had not recognised the child as his heir.
Warwick even went so far as publicly to refer to the prince as the offspring of adultery or fraud in front of a packed assembly of the magnates at Paul’s Cross in London. The King, he said, had not acknowledged him as his son and never would. Margaret never forgave Warwick for this insult which was to prove so damaging to her honour. York prudently kept silent, but of course he had everything to gain from the rumours and the defamation of the Queen.
On 18 November Margaret was churched at Westminster, wearing a robe trimmed with 540 sables, and attended by the duchesses of York, Bedford, Norfolk, Somerset, Exeter and Suffolk, eight countesses including the Countess of Warwick, and seven baronesses. Then she returned with great determination to the political scene.
The birth of a son had consolidated the Queen’s power and her standing in the country. Despite