The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [69]
Throughout the negotiations, Margaret was at the castle of Angers with her mother. In early May both ladies travelled to Tours where they were lodged with King René in the abbey of Beaumont-les-Tours. Here on 4 May, Suffolk visited them to pay his respects to his future queen, and apparently he was much impressed with her beauty and her bearing. On the 22nd the Treaty of Tours was signed, providing for the marriage of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou and including a secret clause committing the English to the surrender of Maine and Anjou. René had at the last minute appealed to the clergy of Anjou, who granted a tenth and a half of their revenues to provide the bride with a trousseau and pay for the betrothal celebrations.
Two days later Margaret and Henry VI were formally betrothed at Tours. The occasion was celebrated with magnificent festivities at court, with King Charles and King René leading the nobility of France in procession through the city. The papal legate, Piero da Monte, Bishop of Brescia, officiated at the ceremony and Suffolk stood proxy for King Henry. Afterwards a banquet was held at which Margaret was accorded all the honours due to a queen of England.
Back in England, on the 27th, John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, died unexpectedly at Wimborne in Dorset, and was buried in the nearby Minster. There were rumours that, unable to come to terms with his humiliating failure in France, the Duke had taken his own life. He left no son, but an infant daughter, Margaret Beaufort, born on 31 May 1443, through whom the Tudor sovereigns would ultimately inherit their claim to the throne of England. Margaret became a ward of Suffolk, who later brought her to court and made plans to marry her to his son, John de la Pole.
Somerset was succeeded, not as duke but as earl, by his brother Edmund Beaufort. Now aged about thirty-seven, Edmund had been created Earl of Dorset in 1442 and Marquess in 1443. His meteoric rise was due in no small part to the efforts of his uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, who meant to ensure that his policies and family ambitions would survive his own death. As with his brother, Edmund was deferred to as a prince of the blood royal, and as such he rapidly became very influential at court, where he stood in high favour with the King. In the years to come, the new Earl of Somerset would play a central role that reflected the dynastic and political importance of the Beauforts in the history of the fifteenth century.
The death of Somerset also brought his ally Suffolk to greater prominence. Suffolk had enjoyed the confidence of Henry VI for more than a decade, and during those years he had grown rich and powerful, having created a widespread network of support within the royal household and the country at large by ensuring that his supporters were preferred to influential positions, both in local and central government. His influence over the royal household was so great that in 1445 he was able to exert it in favour of the appointment of his ally, Adam Moleyns, to the see of Chichester. Moleyns was not the only bishop who owed his mitre to Suffolk.
The main beneficiary of Suffolk’s influence with King and Council was Suffolk himself. By 1444 he was the King’s chief political adviser. He genuinely supported the peace policy, but this, and his obvious self-interest and political inconsistencies, had made the commons loathe him and refer to him as ‘Jackanapes’. The Burgundian chronicler Georges Chastellain describes Suffolk as a second king. Certainly he was in control of the King’s prerogative of patronage. He was jealous of his power and suspicious of his fellow magnates, and was prone to make accusations against his political rivals without first obtaining proof of their alleged misdeeds. He may well have supported Beaufort in poisoning the King’s mind against Gloucester by insinuating that Gloucester’s ambitions were dangerous.
Suffolk’s had