The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [89]
On Thursday, 30 April, Suffolk sailed from Ipswich for Calais and exile with two ships and a little pinnace, which (according to a letter written by William Lomnour of London to John Paston in Norfolk on 5 May) he sent ahead with letters ‘to his trusted men in Calais to see how he should be received’. Later that day, in the straits of Dover, the Duke’s ship was intercepted by a fleet of small vessels which had been lying in wait for him, ‘and there met with him a ship called the Nicholas of the Tower’. The Nicholas was not a pirate ship, as some later historians have suggested; Benet describes her as ‘a great vessel’, and she was in fact part of the royal fleet, her master being Robert Wennington, a ship-owner of Dartmouth.
Rumour later had it that, when Suffolk saw this ship approaching, he asked what name it bore, and when he was told he remembered an old seer who had once prophesied that if he could escape the danger of the Tower, he should be safe. Now ‘his heart failed him’. The master of the Nicholas ‘had knowledge of the Duke’s coming from them that were in the pinnace’, and now he sent his men in a small boat to Suffolk to say ‘he must speak with their master. And so he, with two or three of his men, went forth with them in their boat to the Nicholas, and when he came there, the master bade him, “Welcome, Traitor!” ’ Suffolk was on the Nicholas ‘until Saturday following, and some say he was tried after their fashion upon the articles of his impeachment and found guilty. And in the sight of all his men’ – presumably Suffolk’s small fleet was following – ‘he was drawn out of the great ship into a boat, and there was an axe and a stock, and one of the lewdest of the ship bade him lay down his head’. If he co-operated, he was told, ‘he should be dealt with fairly and die on a sword’. So saying, the sailor ‘took a rusty sword and smote off his head with half a dozen strokes, and took away his gown of russet and his doublet of velvet, mailed, and laid his body on the sands of Dover. And some say that his head was set on a pole by it.’ The head and body lay rotting on the beach for a month until the King gave orders for their removal to Wingfield Church for burial.
Suffolk died a much-hated man, and many rejoiced at his end. Political songs vilified him and gloatingly recounted his fall. The identity of his killers has never been established; presumably they acted on the orders of men who felt that the Duke should be made a scapegoat, or of those who wished to see him suffer a just punishment for his crimes, a punishment that the law had failed to provide.
Suffolk’s widow, the indomitable Alice Chaucer, broke the news of his death to the Queen, who was so grief-stricken that she could not eat for three days and wept continually during that time. After that, anger surfaced, and the desire for retribution. Suffolk might be dead, but she still had Somerset and other powerful supporters who would help her avenge him. But the days when the court party could rule unchallenged were now numbered, and there remained the deadly enmity between York and Somerset as the gravest threat to peace between the contending factions.
* Baynard’s Castle was again rebuilt after the Wars of the Roses, but was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. In 1972, during excavations for an office block, its foundations were discovered. These showed that the castle had been built around an irregular quadrangle. Surviving engravings depict a rectangular-shaped house with a double courtyard, above which soared a hexagonal tower. On the river side, the walls rose straight up from the water, while houses either side were built on stilts.
* Geoffrey had been called Plantagenet after his emblem the broom flower (planta genista), a sprig of which he wore in his hat. Although his son and successive kings until the mid fifteenth century are now referred to as the Plantagenets, none of them had actually used the name.
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John Amend-All
By 1450 the Lancastrian government had not only lost much of its credibility, but it was also bankrupt,