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were allocated £3 a week for his maintenance. At all times there were two squires and two yeomen of the Crown and their men guarding him. Lancastrian chroniclers allege that Henry was not well treated during his imprisonment, but although he may not have been kept very clean or allowed many changes of clothing, his keepers were fairly accommodating, treating him with respect and allowing him certain comforts, such as the services of a chaplain who came to say the holy offices each day for him and permitting him to receive visitors: Warkworth says that ‘anybody was allowed to come and speak to him’. Yet this brought its own disadvantages. One visitor, whose name is not recorded, attacked Henry with a dagger and wounded him in the neck. Predictably, Henry forgave him, although he did administer a mild reproof, telling him he did ‘foully to smite a king anointed so’. Another tactless visitor asked the prisoner how he could justify having ruled as a usurper for so long, but Henry stood up for his cause, and told him, ‘My help cometh of God, who preserveth them that are true at heart.’

Yet despite these comforts and privileges – King Edward even sent him wine from his own cellar – Henry seems to have withdrawn into himself during his imprisonment. He spent much of his time reading or at prayer, but there were occasions when he was forced to face the reality of his defeat and imprisonment and would gasp with shame, or burst into tears and lament his lot, asking what sin he had committed to deserve to be thus locked up. Generally, however, he bore his confinement with fortitude and patience.

The news of her husband’s capture came as a blow to Queen Margaret and ruined her hopes of a Lancastrian restoration, for even if she persuaded Louis XI or Duke Philip to finance an invasion force, Edward held Henry hostage for her good behaviour in a virtually impregnable prison, and she could not risk his life.

On 28 September 1465 George Neville was enthroned as Archbishop of York, but the failure of the King and Queen to attend the ceremony gave rise to speculation about a fresh rift between Edward and Warwick. By January 1466 Warwick was growing desperate about his future relations with King Louis. Edward could not be made to see sense about a French alliance and was moving ever closer to Burgundy; Philip’s ambassadors had recently arrived to discuss a marriage between Edward’s sister, Margaret of York, and Philip’s heir, Charles, Count of Charolais. Warwick knew that Louis would soon hear of this, if he had not already done so, and he wanted the French king to think that his influence with Edward was such that he could turn him away from Burgundy and persuade him to restore friendly relations with France. He therefore forged a letter from Edward to Louis, promising that England had no intention of invading France or hindering him in any way from suppressing rebellion in the duchy of Normandy, which Louis had just wrested from his brother – something that Edward, just then, would never have agreed to. In fact, sending such a letter was an act of treason, but Warwick was beyond caring; he knew also that Edward’s negotiations with Burgundy were not so far advanced that war against France was an imminent possibility.

Unaware of Warwick’s duplicity, Edward went to his castle of Fotheringhay, where, on 30 January, he, his heavily pregnant queen, his mother, and a large gathering of relatives and friends, gathered in the collegiate church for the solemn reinterment of the bodies of the Duke of York and the Earl of Rutland, which had lain for five years in humble graves at Pontefract and had now been brought in a long and stately procession from Yorkshire. Both were laid to rest in the choir, near the tomb of Edward, Duke of York, who had fallen at Agincourt. In 1495, Duchess Cecily, at her own request, was buried beside her husband, and a century later Elizabeth I commissioned and paid for a classically inspired monument to York’s memory which may still be seen today.

Afterwards, the King and Queen returned to Westminster, where Elizabeth